Biodiversity dynamics across environmental gradients and under impending environmental change

跨环境梯度和即将发生的环境变化的生物多样性动态

• 批准号: 2874746
• 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: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2874746
• 关键词: Biodiversity; dynamics; across; environmental; gradients

We live in a time of radical changes and rapid biodiversity loss. To make better predictions of the impacts of anthropogenic change on the world's declining biodiversity, it is crucial to first understand how species are naturally distributed and then assess how their distribution might shift or, worse, disappear. Biodiversity is unequally distributed across the Earth, increasing towards low latitudes, low to intermediate elevations, and intermediate canopy heights within forests. These spatial gradients reflect differences in environmental variables, such as luminosity, temperature and humidity, which affect physiological, demographic, and biotic interaction processes. Species show different preferences for these variables (i.e. ecological niche), which causes biodiversity to peak in areas of high niche overlap, provided that coexistence mechanisms are at play. Both niche-related variables and coexistence mechanisms are being disrupted by humans. Because many environmental variables naturally co-vary, contrasting gradients should provide insights to disentangle their roles in biodiversity dynamics under a changing world. Therefore, this project takes advantage of 1) novel mechanistic models than can simulate contrasting environmental gradients and 2) a biological system of major ecological importance - vascular epiphytes. Vascular epiphytes, including most orchids and bromeliads, are plants growing non-parasitically on trees. They are key to nutrient cycles and interaction networks in tropical forests, accounting for 10% of world's flora and up to 50% of some local floras. They vary in how they are distributed along vertical and elevational gradients, probably following their temperature and humidity preferences and often being geographically restricted (i.e. endemic and threatened). Epiphytes have been understudied due to difficulties in sampling the forest canopy despite being particularly vulnerable to deforestation and global warming. Hence, simulation experiments are ideal to improve our ecological understanding of the system while also to i) identify the data collection that should be prioritized in empirical studies and ii) explore scenarios of human impacts without manipulating vulnerable biodiversity.

我们生活在一个急剧变化和生物多样性迅速丧失的时代。为了更好地预测人为变化对世界生物多样性下降的影响，至关重要的是首先要了解物种的自然分布，然后评估它们的分布可能如何改变，或者更糟的是，消失。生物多样性在地球上的分布是不均匀的，向低纬度、低海拔到中等海拔以及森林中的中间树冠高度增加。这些空间梯度反映了环境变量的差异，如亮度，温度和湿度，影响生理，人口和生物相互作用过程。物种对这些变量（即生态位）表现出不同的偏好，这导致生物多样性在生态位重叠程度高的地区达到顶峰，前提是共存机制发挥作用。生态位相关变量和共存机制都被人类破坏。由于许多环境变量自然地共同变化，对比梯度应该提供见解，以解开它们在不断变化的世界中的生物多样性动态中的作用。因此，该项目利用1）可以模拟对比环境梯度的新型机械模型和2）具有重要生态意义的生物系统-维管附生植物。维管附生植物，包括大多数兰花和凤梨科植物，是非寄生生长在树上的植物。它们是热带森林养分循环和相互作用网络的关键，占世界植物群的10%，在某些地方植物群中高达50%。它们在沿着垂直和海拔梯度上的分布方式各不相同，可能是根据它们对温度和湿度的偏好，而且往往受到地理上的限制（即地方性和受威胁）。附生植物一直研究不足，由于在森林树冠取样的困难，尽管特别容易受到砍伐森林和全球变暖。因此，模拟实验是理想的，以提高我们对系统的生态理解，同时也i）确定数据收集，应优先在实证研究和ii）探索人类影响的情况下，不操纵脆弱的生物多样性。