Structure, biodiversity and conservation of arthropod assemblages and populations

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This research explores the evolutionary pressures that maintain arthropod life histories and the ecological significance of alternative life history strategies in arthropods. It also integrates understanding of semi-aquatic bug (waterstrider), ground beetle and spider populations into communities, and explores the biodiversity and conservation implications of the resulting understanding. The work is generally aimed at how arthropods respond in both ecological and evolutionary time to changes in their environments, especially anthropogenic changes, and how they are integrated into functioning ecological communities. It examines responses to disturbances driven by seasonal changes, urbanization and forestry practices, measuring arthropod responses in terms of adaptations to deal with cyclic disturbances like winter and flooding, and population and community responses to more irregular disturbances driven by wildfire, forestry practices, urbanization and climate change. In work about life history the focus is on the selective forces acting on body size, especially with respect to effects on overwintering success in boreal species, and in a tropical situation, with adaptive understanding of exceptional body size in a waterstrider species that is close to the physical size limit of being able to walk on water. New work in nutritional ecology of boreal waterstriders seeks to understand the mechanics of feeding, the development and significance of the microbial communities inhabiting waterstrider guts, and the implications of variation in diet for growth and reproduction in boreal species. The main applied significance of the work relates to how we can improve urban development strategies to make them more ecological sensitive, and further develop forest management and forest conservation practices with respect to the sustainability criterion of maintaining biodiversity characteristic of natural systems. A central aspect of the research is understanding both 1) arthropod habitats at the fine scales essential to work out the selective forces acting on life histories, and 2) the features of local habitats that must be maintained to conserve populations and communities at ‘natural’ or, at least acceptable levels in the face of human activities. Most of the work deals with semi-aquatic bugs and ground and litter-dwelling arthropods, mainly beetles and spiders, in Alberta, Canada, and provides useful opportunities for student education in identification of arthropods and in basic and applied ecological research. A small amount of funding (<2%) is requested to support work on tropical systems in China and Colombia that deal, respectively, with conservation of a world-heritage insect, and arthropod studies in one of the Earth’s most poorly understood centres of biodiversity in the upper Orinoco basin. Participation in both of these latter projects will lead to international opportunities for Canadian students.