Assessing the impact of island bird extinctions

评估岛屿鸟类灭绝的影响

• 批准号: 2741520
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2741520
• 关键词: Assessing; impact; island; bird; extinctions

All over the world we have seen a rise in extinction rates, and we are currently experiencing a global decline in biodiversity. Particularly islands have shown a disproportionate number of extinctions. Despite islands taking up only 3.5% of global area, they support a huge diversity of species as well as a large number of endemic species - this makes islands an important priority for conservation efforts fighting declining biodiversity. Furthermore, islands have historically been of great significance in the development of classic ecological theory (e.g., the island equilibrium theory, limiting similarity etc.) due to their isolation making them ideal as "natural laboratories". Islands gives the possibility to observe species interaction in somewhat isolation while having "samples" across different climatic zones, habitat types etc. While we have some understanding of the number of extinctions, our understanding of the consequences to ecosystem services is less well understood. This includes mapping out current change/loss in ecological function as well as the potential for change in the future through increased vulnerability or a lack of robustness of the native community. Many species are increasingly threatened, and a continuation in the loss of many species along with a spread of few species is predicted for the future. This project aims to look at the potential change in ecological function with species extinctions on islands. While this project is focused on avifauna, the hope is to include other taxonomic groups to get a broader perspective and better understanding of the ecological processes taking place in island communities. This will be done though analyses of functional traits to calculate changes in functional diversity of the community. Functional traits are morphological and/or physiological characteristics of the organism which impacts fitness - thus gives insight into an individual's "role" in the community outside the scope of species presence/absence. This knowledge has potential implications in the interpretation of classical ecological theories with application across ecosystems and could provide insight as well as a foundation for better mitigation and protection of biodiversity worldwide.

在世界各地，我们看到了灭绝速度的上升，我们目前正在经历全球生物多样性的下降。特别是岛屿已经显示出不成比例的灭绝数量。尽管岛屿只占全球面积的3.5%，但它们支持着巨大的物种多样性和大量的特有物种-这使得岛屿成为应对生物多样性下降的保护努力的重要优先事项。此外，岛屿在经典生态理论(如岛屿平衡理论、限制相似性等)的发展中具有重要的历史意义。由于它们与世隔绝，使它们成为理想的“天然实验室”。岛屿使我们有可能在一定程度上孤立地观察物种的相互作用，同时拥有跨越不同气候带、生境类型等的“样本”。虽然我们对物种灭绝的数量有了一些了解，但我们对生态系统服务的后果的理解却不太清楚。这包括绘制出目前生态功能的变化/损失，以及未来因土著社区脆弱性增加或缺乏稳健性而发生变化的可能性。许多物种受到越来越大的威胁，预计未来许多物种的消失将继续，而少数物种的传播将会继续。这个项目旨在研究随着岛屿上物种的灭绝，生态功能的潜在变化。虽然这个项目的重点是鸟类，但希望包括其他分类学小组，以获得更广泛的视角，更好地了解岛屿社区发生的生态过程。这将通过分析功能特征来计算群落功能多样性的变化。功能特征是影响适合度的有机体的形态和/或生理特征--从而洞察个体在物种存在/不存在的范围之外在群落中的“角色”。这一知识对解释经典生态理论并在生态系统中应用具有潜在意义，并可为更好地缓解和保护世界各地的生物多样性提供洞察力和基础。