Feedback mechanisms between ecosystem change, fish behaviour and metabolism

生态系统变化、鱼类行为和新陈代谢之间的反馈机制

• 批准号: RGPIN-2016-04016
• 负责人: Rennie, Michael
• 金额: $ 2.04万
• 依托单位: Lakehead University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=614784
• 关键词: Feedback; mechanisms; between; ecosystem; change

The ecosystem services that people draw from freshwater lakes in Canada—recreation, fishing and irrigation, to name a few—can also cause stress on the aquatic communities that we draw those services from. These impacts may interact with each other, or with other forms of background stress (e.g., climate change) in unexpected ways. Accurately measuring how freshwater ecosystems respond to stress, and clearly understanding the ways in which specific stress factors act on ecosystems (and how stressors interact with one another) are key steps towards the long-term sustainable management of these vital ecosystems. A better understanding of how environmental stress impacts ecosystems, and the amount and types of stress aquatic ecosystems can tolerate, will put policy makers and resource managers in a better position to protect our essential freshwater resources while ensuring that they continue to provide the services we enjoy in a rapidly changing environment. The link between community structure and ecosystem function, or how quickly and what path energy takes as it moves through the food webs, remains an understudied area of ecological research. It is however becoming clear that in many cases, the behaviour of aquatic animals may help to explain some of the variability we observe in how efficiently energy is transferred from one trophic level of the food web to the next. Our research program seeks to reveal how structural changes in aquatic animal communities affect ecosystem function and energetic pathways. Our ultimate goal is to advance knowledge in the fields of fisheries biology, food web ecology, community ecology and bioenergetics, and to use the information we gain to help improve sustainable resource management of our freshwaters for future generations. During the next five years of my NSERC Discovery Grant Program, I will lead my research group to more clearly illustrate the contribution of fish behaviour and metabolism to variation in energy transfer rates in Canadian freshwater lakes. We will address this objective using two complementary approaches. First, we will develop ecological models to take advantage of extensive long-term data and archived tissue collections of freshwater organisms from the world-class IISD-Experimental Lakes Area; this will allow us to model fish behaviour and metabolism over the course of decades through both whole ecosystem experiments and climate change, and will allow us to evaluate how important those changes are and how they may interact to alter fish behaviour and energy flow through these ecosystems. Second, we will develop and carry out a series of experimental and comparative lab and field-based ecological studies to evaluate and identify how fish behaviour differs among lakes that vary or change in specific ways, and relate those changes to vital rates of fish growth, density, reproduction and mortality.

人们从加拿大淡水湖获得的生态系统服务——娱乐、捕鱼和灌溉，等等——也会给我们赖以获得这些服务的水生群落带来压力。这些影响可能以意想不到的方式相互作用，或与其他形式的背景压力（如气候变化）相互作用。准确测量淡水生态系统如何应对压力，清楚地了解特定压力因素对生态系统的作用方式（以及压力因素如何相互作用）是实现这些重要生态系统长期可持续管理的关键步骤。更好地了解环境压力如何影响生态系统，以及水生生态系统可以承受的压力的数量和类型，将使政策制定者和资源管理者能够更好地保护我们的基本淡水资源，同时确保它们在快速变化的环境中继续提供我们所享受的服务。