Towards a Unified Theory of Whole Ecosystems

最近，生态学家提出，生物多样性正在下降(称为生物多样性危机)。也许更令人担忧的是，人类的影响可能不仅影响多样性，更重要的是，它可能威胁到这些相互作用的物种的结构和功能。显然，是基础架构，而不仅仅是多样性本身，维持着维持生态系统所必需的功能。因此，为了理解生物多样性丧失的影响，监测潜在“生物结构”的变化是至关重要的。该建议采用理论和实证研究相结合的方法，监测生态系统在“自然”环境和受人类影响的环境中的适应性结构。理论/经验相结合的方法使我们能够记录适应性结构的丧失(经验)，以及这种丧失的结构对生态系统的稳定性和功能的影响(理论/经验)。此外，这里提出的理论研究将继续朝着跨生态等级的统一结果的方向发展。这一点很重要，因为它表明，可能会有一套非常普遍的规则来产生稳定或可持续的自然界生态系统。提案最后认为，这一统一的研究计划使我们能够开始开发一种综合的生物监测方法(从行为到整个生态系统的通量)，为我们提供我们最终依赖的生态系统即将发生变化的早期预警信号。

Recently, ecologist have suggested that diversity is in decline (called the Biosiversity Crisis). Perhaps even more alarming is the notion that human impact is likely not just influencing diversity, but more importantly it is likely threatening the structure and functioning of these interacting species. Clearly it is the underlying architecture, not just diversity itself, that maintains the functions necessary for sustaining ecosystems. To understand the implications of biodiversity loss, it is therefore crucial to monitor changes to the underlying ‘biostructure’. This proposal uses a combination of theoretical and empirical research to monitor the adaptive structure of ecosystems in "natural" settings as well as across human-impacted settings. The combined theoretical/empirical approach allows us to document the loss of adaptive structure (empirical) as well the implications of this lost structure for the stability and functioning of ecosystems (theoretical/empirical). Further, the theoretical research proposed here will continue towards unifying results across the ecological hierarchy. This is important as it suggests that there may be very general sets of rules that yield stable, or sustainable, ecosystems in nature. The proposal ends by arguing that this unified research program places us in a position to begin to develop an integrated biomonitoring approach (from behavior to whole ecosystem fluxes) that provides us with early warning signals of impending change to the ecosystems we ultimately rely on.