Movement and spatial consumer-resource dynamics in a rapidly changing world

在过去的20年里，我们对影响动物运动过程的众多因素的理解取得了巨大的进步。较少关注气候变化和人为景观干扰对空间动态和种群生存能力的影响。我的长期目标是确定草食动物迁移的因果机制联系，确定如何运动有助于当地的消费者和他们的资源丰富的共同变化，消费者资源动态的空间过程的影响建模，并使用这些模拟模型来评估气候变化和人为干扰的影响迁移草食动物的生存能力。我建议解决这些目标，使用混合的理论和实地技术，在三个充分研究的生态系统中的迁徙草食动物种群：（1）角马和汤姆森的瞪羚在开放的平原和森林草原的塞伦盖蒂国家公园，（2）野生和驯养驯鹿在山区的斯堪的纳维亚半岛，（3）迁徙林地驯鹿在北方的森林中的北方安大略。实地研究将仅限于非洲和斯堪的纳维亚地区，因为已经获得了林地驯鹿的相关实地测量结果。理论建模将完全集成到所有3个生态系统中，并使用空间明确的模拟模型来探索运动和空间动态对生态相互作用的影响。

The past 2 decades has witnessed enormous advances in our understanding of the multitude of factors influencing animal movement processes. Less attention has been devoted to the impact of climate change and anthropogenic landscape disturbance on spatial dynamics and population viability. My long-term objectives are to identify causal mechanistic links for herbivore migration, determine how movement contributes to local co-variation in the abundance of consumers and their resources, model the impact of spatial processes on consumer-resource dynamics, and use those simulation models to evaluate the impact of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance on the viability of migratory herbivores. I propose to address these objective using a mix of theoretical and field techniques in three well-studied ecosystems populated by migratory herbivore populations: (1) wildebeest and Thomson's gazelles in the open plains and wooded grasslands of Serengeti National Park, (2) wild and domesticated reindeer in the montane regions of Scandinavia, and (3) migratory woodland caribou in the boreal forests of northern Ontario. Field studies will be restricted to just the African and Scandinavian sites, since the relevant field measurements have already been obtained for woodland caribou. Theoretical modeling will be fully integrated into all 3 ecosystems, with spatially-explicit simulation models used to explore the implications of movement and spatial dynamics for ecological interactions.