MSA: Understanding spatial patterns of abundance and occupancy in terms of taxa, traits, and space

地理上分布较广的物种也往往在每个抽样地点出现较多的物种。几十年来的研究一直试图利用这种关系来理解栖息地退化可能如何影响不同地点的物种丰度。例如，如果一个物种的地理范围由于土地利用的变化或其他因素而突然受到限制，其他地点的局部丰度可能会发生什么变化？然而，这些所谓的富足-占用关系远不是一般的。这项拟议的研究旨在衡量水生和陆地系统中不同物种群体中丰度-占用关系的共性。在这样做的过程中，研究将估计这些关系对采样程序、地理分布、环境条件和物种群体的依赖性。这项合作研究将涉及对多名研究生的培训，该科学将被纳入针对服务不足社区的大学本科生和高中生的教学和研讨会。物种丰富度与占有率的比例关系被认为是种群生态学和宏观生态学的普遍规律。然而，测试这些关系的数据通常来自对一小部分物种的非标准化、机会主义的调查。结合应用的各种统计方法，对单一物种的丰富度-占有率关系有不同的支持。理解导致证据差异的条件是一个明显的知识鸿沟，挑战这一基本的宏观生态假说。利用国家生态观测网络(NEON)的空间复制和标准化数据资源，这项研究将研究丰度-占用关系的斜率如何随物种特征(例如营养水平)、分类关系、生境(例如水生和陆地)、地理范围、样本点的空间分布和当地社区背景而变化。此外，该项目将使用理论模型来确定出现富余-占用关系的条件。这种对物种生活史、生态位需求和样地空间结构的详尽探索，将挑战简单随机过程假设下的丰度-占用关系。这项提议将利用霓虹灯关于物种丰度和占用地点比例的数据来检查一大组分类群的丰度-占用关系。结合霓虹灯数据和理论元社区模型，本研究将扩展丰度-占用关系背后的理论，并衡量这些关系的经验支持。总而言之，这将导致对这些关系以及它们与自然界其他宏观生态模式的关系的更全面的理解。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Species that are more geographically widespread also tend to occur at higher numbers in each sampled location. Decades of research has attempted to use this relationship to understand how habitat degradation might affect species abundance at different sites. For example, if the geographic range of a species is suddenly restricted due to land use change or other factors, how might local abundance in the other sites change? However, these so-called abundance-occupancy relationships are far from general. The proposed research aims to gauge the generality of abundance-occupancy relationships in a diverse set of species groups across both aquatic and terrestrial systems. In doing so, the research will estimate the dependency of these relationships on sampling procedures, geographic distribution, environmental conditions, and species groups. This collaborative research will involve the training of multiple graduate students, and the science will be incorporated into teaching and workshops aimed both at college undergraduates and high school students in underserved communities. The scaling of species abundance with occupancy is claimed to be a general law in population ecology and macroecology. However, the data to test these relationships often comes from non-standardized, opportunistic surveys of a small subset of species. Combined with the variety of statistical methods applied, there is mixed support for abundance-occupancy relationships for single species. Understanding the conditions which lead to this variability in evidence is an obtrusive knowledge gap challenging this fundamental macroecological hypothesis. Leveraging spatially replicated and standardized data resources of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), this research will examine how slopes of abundance-occupancy relationships vary as a function of species traits (e.g., trophic level), taxonomic relationships, habitats (e.g., aquatic, terrestrial), geographic range, spatial distribution of sampled sites, and the local community context. Further, the project will use theoretical models to determine the conditions under which abundance-occupancy relationships emerge. This exhaustive exploration of species life history, niche requirements, and the spatial structure of sampled sites will challenge the abundance-occupancy relationship against the hypothesis of simple stochastic processes. This proposal will leverage NEON data on species abundances and fraction of occupied sites to examine abundance–occupancy relationships for a large set of taxa. Combining the NEON data and theoretical metacommunity models, this research will expand the theory underlying abundance-occupancy relationships, and gauge the empirical support for these relationships. Together, this will lead to a more synthetic understanding of these relationships and how they relate to other macroecological patterns in nature.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.