Individual-based population and evolutionary ecology in theory and application

理解生态相互作用和特征变异如何影响适应度、种群动态以及最终进化的复杂性，是所有生物学中最具挑战性的问题之一。在这一追求中，进化生态学的方法不同于其他学科，因为它明确地关注个体变异的原因和结果。我在这方面工作的例子集中在大型食草动物(林地驯鹿、马鹿、野马)的野生种群上。在这里，我概述了主要针对我对新斯科舍省萨布尔岛野马的长期、以个体为基础的研究的拟议研究。该系统的非凡之处在于，它允许我在一个狂野但又理想化的环境中研究生物学的模型生物的特征和生活史变异、个体生态学和进化遗传学。作为岛上唯一的陆地哺乳动物，这些马没有行会竞争对手或捕食者；它们也处于无人管理的状态(加拿大公园将其指定为“归化野生动物”)，因此，它们非常适合进行基于个体的生态和进化研究。过去一年是我所在团队的全种群抽样计划的第八年，每年夏天几乎每匹马(

Making sense of the complexity of how ecological interactions and trait variation affect fitness, population dynamics, and ultimately evolution is one of the most challenging problems in all of biology. In this pursuit the approach of evolutionary ecology is distinguished from other disciplines by its explicit focus on the causes and consequences of individual variation. Examples of my work in this context focus on wild populations of large herbivores (woodland caribou, red deer, feral horses). Here I outline proposed research principally directed at my long-term, individual-based study of feral horses on Sable Island, Nova Scotia. The system is remarkable in that it allows me to study trait and life history variation, individual ecology, and evolutionary genetics for a model organism of biology in a wild but yet idealized setting. As the island’s only terrestrial mammal, the horses exist without guild competitors or predators; they are also maintained in an unmanaged state (designated as ‘naturalized wildlife’ by Parks Canada) which, as a consequence, makes them highly amenable to individual-based ecological and evolutionary research. This past year was the eighth for my group’s whole-population sampling program whereby each summer for almost every horse (