Understanding and managing connectivity across habitat types: the case of avian pollinators with altitudinal movement in the tropical Andes mountains

你对空间生态学和开发方法感兴趣吗？这些方法可以为下一代海洋、陆地和淡水系统的保护方法提供信息。你想在一个你可以领导自己的方向的项目上与一个充满活力的团队合作吗？互联互通已成为生态和保护的关键理念。现在人们广泛认识到，当适宜栖息地的斑块之间存在连通性时，物种具有更强大的空间种群动态。明确侧重于增加陆地、海洋和淡水系统之间的连通性的管理迅速增加。目前对连通性的理解和管理侧重于同一类型栖息地斑块之间的连通性。通常，人们感兴趣的是一片土地上的森林斑块连接得有多好，或者珊瑚礁和鱼类种群被洋流连接得有多好。对于终生生活在单一栖息地类型的物种来说，这很可能是对连通性的充分考虑。然而，许多物种的生活史更复杂，对于这些物种来说，连接要复杂得多，人们对此知之甚少。许多物种一年中有一部分时间在一个栖息地度过，另一部分时间在另一个栖息地度过。这种季节性迁徙可以发生在很远的距离上，也可以更多地发生在性质上，例如在垂直迁徙中。许多其他物种在幼年时期所依赖的栖息地不同于它们成年后所需要的栖息地。一个很好的例子是在海洋系统中，许多成年后栖息在珊瑚礁上的鱼类物种在幼年时依赖红树林或海草栖息地(Mumby等人。2006)。对于这些物种，我们不仅需要了解繁殖生境斑块之间的连通性，还需要了解不同季节或不同生命阶段所使用的栖息地之间的连通性。这个博士项目将通过开发新的方法来评估物种与这些更复杂的空间生活史之间的连通性，以解决这一知识差距。然后，这些方法将被用来确定我们应该如何管理景观(或海景)以实现连通性，其中我们不仅需要考虑物种繁衍的栖息地区域之间的连通性，而且还需要考虑不同季节或不同生命阶段所使用的生境之间的连通性。大量数据已经存在，因此完全以案头为基础的项目是可能的。然而，根据学生的兴趣(以及COVID的情况)，现场工作也有可能收集新的数据来对模型进行参数设置和验证。我们对野外工作可能所在的系统是灵活的；可能性包括安第斯山脉鸟类或蝙蝠的高空迁徙(Hsiung等人。2018)和印度洋-太平洋珊瑚礁鱼类的连通性。将提供基于个人的建模方面的培训(Bocedi等人)。2014年)、统计和实地调查。

Are you interested in spatial ecology and in developing methods that can inform the next generation of conservation approaches for marine, terrestrial and freshwater systems? Do you want to work with a dynamic team on a project that you can lead in your own direction? Connectivity has become a key concept in ecology and conservation. There is now broad recognition that species have more robust spatial population dynamics when there is connectivity between patches of suitable habitat. There has been a rapid increase in management that focuses explicitly on increasing connectivity across terrestrial, marine and freshwater systems. Current understanding and management of connectivity focuses on connections between patches of the same type of habitat. Typically, people are interested in how well-connected forest patches are across a landscape or how well reefs, and thus fish populations, are connected by ocean currents. For species that live their whole lives in a single habitat type this is likely to be a sufficient consideration of connectivity. However, many species have more complex life-histories and, for these species, connectivity is much more complex and is poorly understood. Many species spend part of the year in one habitat and another part of the year in another habitat. This seasonal migration can occur over huge distances or be more local in nature as, for example, in altitudinal migrations. Many other species are dependent on a different habitat as a juvenile to that which they require as an adult. An excellent example of this is in marine systems where many fish species that inhabit reefs as adults are dependent upon mangroves or seagrass habitat as juveniles (Mumby et al. 2006). For these species we need to understand not only connectivity between breeding habitat patches but also between habitat used in different seasons or in different life-stages.This PhD project will address this knowledge gap by developing novel methods for assessing connectivity in species with these more complex spatial life-histories. These methods will then be used to determine how we should manage landscapes (or seascapes) for connectivity where we need to account not only for connectivity between areas of habitat where a species breed, but also for connectivity between habitat used in different seasons or at different life-stages. Substantial data already exist so a fully desk-based project is possible. However, depending upon the student's interest (and the situation with COVID), there is also the potential for field work to gather novel data for parameterising and validating the models. We are flexible on which system the field work might be in; possibilities include altitudinal migration of birds or bats in the Andes (Hsiung et al. 2018) and reef fish connectivity in the Indo Pacific. Training will be provided in individual-based modelling (Bocedi et al. 2014), statistics and fieldwork.