Ecosytem functionning at the crossroad of biogeography and community ecology

生态学家一直对生物多样性的空间分布很感兴趣。温度直接影响大地理梯度上的许多生态系统过程，因为它影响生物速率。气候也是许多物种分布和生态相互作用的重要驱动力。然而，在这些事实之间的十字路口发现了一个基本的，仍然没有答案的问题：生物多样性的分布，以及社区生态的发生，在多大程度上影响生态系统功能的全球分布？我的研究计划的长期目标是发展理论，以了解和预测生物多样性分布和生态系统功能在地理空间尺度。更具体地说，我将调查的假设，生态相互作用的架构的空间变化是制约生态系统生产力在地理尺度上，协同作用的直接影响的温度对生物速率。我的具体目标是：i）发展一个数学形式主义，以代表结构的生态系统相互作用网络; ii）综合生态系统的复杂性，分析其维数; iii）形式化和测试定量理论的温度依赖性的营养调节。

Ecologists have always been fascinated by the spatial distribution of biodiversity. Temperature impacts directly many ecosystem processes over large biogeographical gradients because it affects biological rates. Climate is also an essential driver of many species ranges and ecological interactions. At the crossroad between these facts is however found a fundamental, and still unanswered, question: to what extent the distribution of biodiversity, and the community ecology taking place, is influencing the global distribution of ecosystem functioning? The long-term objective of my research program is to develop theory to understand and predict biodiversity distribution and ecosystem functioning at biogeographical spatial scales. More specifically, I will investigate the hypothesis that the spatial variation of the architecture of ecological interactions is constraining ecosystem productivity at the biogeographical scale, in synergy with the direct effect of temperature on biological rates. My specific objectives are: i) develop a mathematical formalism to represent the architecture of metaecosystem interaction networks; ii) synthesize the complexity of metaecosystems with analysis of their dimensionality; iii) formalize and test quantitative theory of temperature-dependence of trophic regulation.