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

地理上分布更广的物种在每个采样地点的数量也往往更高。几十年的研究试图利用这种关系来了解栖息地退化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变化或其他因素突然受到限制，那么其他地点的本地丰度会如何变化？然而，这些所谓的丰度-占用关系远非一般。拟议的研究旨在衡量水生和陆地系统中不同物种群的丰度-占用关系的普遍性。在此过程中，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，并且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中。在种群生态学和宏观生态学中，物种丰度随占用率的变化是一个普遍规律。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、机会性调查。结合所应用的各种统计方法，对单个物种的丰度-占用关系有不同的支持。理解导致这种证据可变性的条件是一个突出的知识差距，挑战了这一基本的宏观生态假设。利用国家生态观测网络（NEON）的空间复制和标准化数据资源，本研究将研究丰度-占用关系的斜率如何随着物种特征（如营养级）、分类关系、栖息地（如水生、陆生）、地理范围、采样地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丰度-占用关系出现的条件。这种对物种生活史、生态位需求和采样地点空间结构的详尽探索将挑战丰度-占用关系，反对简单随机过程的假设。该提案将利用NEON数据对物种丰度和被占用地点的比例进行研究，以检验大量分类群的丰度-占用关系。结合NEON数据和理论元社区模型，本研究将扩展丰度-占用关系的理论基础，并衡量这些关系的实证支持。总之，这将导致对这些关系以及它们如何与自然界中的其他宏观生态模式相关联的更综合的理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.