Species interactions and ecological function under biodiversity loss and climate variability

生物多样性丧失和气候变化下的物种相互作用和生态功能

• 批准号: 2330772
• 负责人: Jedediah Brodie
• 金额: $ 87.5万
• 依托单位: University of Montana
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-08-15 至 2028-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2330772&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Species; interactions; ecological; function; under

Forests are vital to the health of our planet, providing clean air, fresh water, and a variety of other benefits to humans. They are also home to a vast array of plant and animal life, all of which play important roles in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. Like all ecosystems, however, forests are increasingly threatened by biodiversity loss and climate change. Though these changes can disrupt the complex interactions among species that make forests function properly, we still have a limited understanding of these cascading impacts. This study takes advantage of a unique natural experiment to investigate how the loss of a key species – the bearded pig – affects the health of a tropical rain forest in Borneo. The bearded pig was once a common animal in this ecosystem, playing a vital role in seed predation, herbivory, and nutrient cycling, but was recently wiped out by an introduced disease. This project will use a combination of field observations, experiments, and modeling to understand how the loss of bearded pigs has affected the ecosystem. Research results will be disseminated to non-governmental organizations and policy-makers involved in biodiversity assessment and conservation. The project will also generate outreach materials to educate the public and K-12 students about ecological functions and how they are affected by global changes. Specifically, the research has three main objectives. First, it will assess how the loss of bearded pigs affects the survival and growth of tree seedlings. Pigs played a key role in tree regeneration by eating the seeds of many plant species. Researchers will repeat a number of exclosure experiments conducted when pigs were abundant to determine how pigs and other seed-destroying consumers like rodents, insects, and fungi affect seed fates, and whether these other groups compensate for the lost effects of pigs. This will help elucidate how extirpation of an important mammal species affects the regeneration of multiple tree species. Second, the research will determine how the loss of bearded pigs and climate change combine to affect the amount of carbon stored by the forest over time. By affecting regeneration of large trees with high wood density more than other types of trees, bearded pigs are thought to have influenced overall forest carbon storage in ways that are now changing after the species’ loss. Such ecosystem changes might become even more severe as the forest starts to experience more frequent and severe droughts. Using integral projection models parameterized with extensive observational and experimental data, researchers will examine the population trajectories of numerous tree species that vary in adult size, wood density, and other traits important for carbon storage. Finally, the research will ascertain how the loss of bearded pigs affects other animals in the forest. Pigs were an important food source for predators like clouded leopards, they competed with other herbivores like deer for food, and they potentially even affected birds and bats by competing with (and reducing the abundance of) seed-eating insects. Using occurrence and abundance data spanning the last decade, researchers will examine whether the loss of pigs is changing the abundance of these other important animals in the rain forest.This project is jointly funded by Population and Community Ecology, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and Ecosystem Sciences.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.

森林对我们地球的健康至关重要，为人类提供清洁的空气，淡水和各种其他好处。它们也是大量植物和动物的家园，所有这些都在维持生态系统的平衡方面发挥着重要作用。然而，与所有生态系统一样，森林日益受到生物多样性丧失和气候变化的威胁。虽然这些变化可能会破坏使森林正常运作的物种之间的复杂相互作用，但我们对这些级联影响的了解仍然有限。这项研究利用了一个独特的自然实验来调查一个关键物种-胡子猪-的损失如何影响婆罗洲热带雨林的健康。胡子猪曾经是这个生态系统中的一种常见动物，在种子捕食、草食和营养循环中发挥着至关重要的作用，但最近被一种引入的疾病消灭了。该项目将结合实地观察、实验和建模，以了解胡子猪的损失如何影响生态系统。研究结果将分发给参与生物多样性评估和保护的非政府组织和决策者。该项目还将制作宣传材料，教育公众和K-12学生了解生态功能以及全球变化如何影响他们。具体来说，这项研究有三个主要目标。首先，它将评估胡子猪的损失如何影响树苗的生存和生长。猪通过吃许多植物物种的种子在树木再生中发挥了关键作用。研究人员将重复一些在猪数量丰富时进行的封闭实验，以确定猪和其他破坏种子的消费者（如啮齿动物，昆虫和真菌）如何影响种子的命运，以及这些其他群体是否补偿了猪的损失。这将有助于阐明一个重要哺乳动物物种的灭绝如何影响多个树种的再生。其次，这项研究将确定长胡子猪的损失和气候变化联合收割机如何结合起来，随着时间的推移影响森林储存的碳量。通过影响具有高木材密度的大树的再生比其他类型的树木更多，胡须猪被认为影响了整体森林碳储存的方式，这些方式在物种消失后正在发生变化。随着森林开始经历更频繁和更严重的干旱，这种生态系统的变化可能会变得更加严重。使用积分投影模型参数化与广泛的观测和实验数据，研究人员将检查人口的轨迹，许多树种不同的成年人的大小，木材密度，和其他特征的重要碳储存。最后，这项研究将确定胡子猪的损失如何影响森林中的其他动物。猪是云豹等掠食者的重要食物来源，它们与鹿等其他食草动物竞争食物，甚至可能通过与食种子昆虫竞争（并减少其数量）来影响鸟类和蝙蝠。利用过去十年的发生率和丰度数据，研究人员将研究猪的损失是否正在改变雨林中其他重要动物的丰度。该项目由人口与社区生态学，刺激竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR），该奖项反映了NSF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进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。