Climate and the ecological energetics of interacting species

我的研究小组使用实验室、野外和建模方法相结合的方法来确定动物能量学（动物从环境中获取和吸收能量，并在维持、生长和繁殖之间分配吸收能量的过程）的生态和进化后果。事实证明，松鼠和花栗鼠是研究动物能量学的最佳动物模型，正是因为它们数量众多，易于观察、操纵和捕获，它们是大多数人熟悉的后院鸟类喂食者和城市公园居民。但我们不是在后院和公园里研究这些物种，而是在它们受自然资源限制和捕食影响的野生种群中研究它们。我们与北方政府和社区合作，对麋鹿、海狸和鲸鱼等大型野生动物进行研究，以补充对小型哺乳动物的研究。这项研究计划的重点是利用生物学的最新进展，这是指使用小型化的动物标签来记录和/或传递有关动物运动、行为、生理和/或环境的数据。我们建议将这些生物学家部署在加拿大北部不同地区的四个主要野生动物群落上，以更好地了解气候如何影响作为捕食者和猎物或作为共享资源竞争对手的物种的能量状态（活动，心率和体温）。这项提议的研究将有助于建立新的生物能源数据和模型，帮助我们记录北方环境变化如何改变野生动物的丰度、分布和共存。

My research group uses a combination of laboratory, field, and modeling approaches to identify the ecological and evolutionary consequences of animal energetics (the process by which animals acquire and assimilate energy from the environment, and allocate assimilated energy between maintenance, growth, and reproduction). As it turns out, squirrels and chipmunks, familiar to most as visitors to backyard bird feeders and residents of urban parks, are some of the best animal models to study animal energetics, precisely because they are abundant and easy to observe, manipulate and capture. But rather than studying these species in backyards and parks, we study them where they occur in wild populations subject to natural resource-limitation and predation. We complement this small mammal research with studies on larger wildlife like moose, beaver and whales, which we conduct in collaboration with northern governments and communities. This research proposal focuses on using recent advances in biologging, which refers to the use of miniaturized animal-attached tags for logging and/or relaying of data about an animal's movements, behaviour, physiology and/or environment. We propose to deploy these biologgers on four prominent wildlife assemblages in different parts of the Canadian North to better understand how climate affects the energetic status (activity, heart rate, and body temperature) of species that interact as predators and prey or as competitors over shared respurces. This proposed research will contribute to new bioenergetic data and models that will help us document how northern environmental change will alter wildlife abundance, distribution and coexistence.