Changing species interactions along environmental gradients

当今生态学领域面临的最大挑战之一是将生理学和基础生态学的进步联系起来，以改进对气候变化的生态反应的预测。一个特别复杂和普遍的问题是，我们对物种之间的相互作用--如竞争和捕食--如何随着环境的变化而变化的理解。在这项提案中，我计划采取两个层次的方法来应对这一挑战，重点放在竞争上。*首先，我的研究小组将利用实验微观世界，测试关于剥削性竞争如何随着气温升高和水生二氧化碳变化而变化的理论预测。我们的预测将建立在代谢比例理论的基础上，并使用对照实验来确定代谢比例和其他特征在竞争结果中的作用。我们还将通过评估不同环境中物种对之间的竞争结果来测试我们的预测能力。这项工作将在生态学领域产生巨大影响，将引起致力于了解物种相互作用如何在物种范围内变化的地理生态学家的浓厚兴趣，并将引起研究人员和管理人员的广泛兴趣，这些研究人员和管理者在竞争结果随气候变化的系统中工作。*第二，我们将使用生态合成在更广泛的分类和空间尺度上应用这些结果。我们将整理和综合已发表的研究，其中与剥削竞争相关的物种的生理特征被发现随着温度的函数而变化，以揭示这些反应的共性。我们还将汇集物种优势度随温度和二氧化碳变化的区域研究，并建立物种特征数据库，以测试基于特征的框架，以了解未来海洋气候中物种优势度的变化。这项工作将把我们工作的影响扩展到全球范围。*该计划旨在直接解决我们在预测生物对环境变化的反应能力方面的严重缺陷，并推动生态学领域对环境对物种相互作用的作用进行更深层次的机械性理解。我们把重点放在气候变化上，并计划与加拿大的管理者、政策制定者和非政府组织接触，以扩大这些成果对加拿大气候变化适应战略的影响。这项工作将改变我们对社区互动和气候变化的看法，并标志着加拿大在制定基于生态的气候变化应对预测方面处于领先地位。

One of the greatest challenges facing the field of ecology today is to connect advances in physiology and fundamental ecology, towards improving predictions about ecological responses to climate change. One particularly complex and pervasive issue is our understanding of how interactions between species - such as competition and predation - change as a function of the environment. In this proposal, I plan to take a two-tiered approach to addressing this challenge, focusing on competition.******First, using experimental microcosms, my research group will test theoretical predictions about how exploitative competition changes as a function of increased temperature and changes in aquatic CO2. We will base our predictions on metabolic scaling theory, and use controlled experiments to ascertain the role of metabolic scaling rate and other traits, upon outcomes of competition. We will also test our predictive power by assessing competitive outcomes between pairs of species in different environments. This work will be highly impactful in the field of ecology, will be of keen interest to geographic ecologists working to understand how species interactions change across a species' range, and will be of wide general interest to researchers and managers working in systems where competitive outcomes are changing with climate.******Second, we will use ecological synthesis to apply these results at a wider taxonomic and spatial scale. We will collate and synthesize published studies in which species' physiological traits associated with exploitative competition have been found to change as a function of temperature, to uncover the generality of these responses. We will also bring together regional studies of changes in species dominance as a function of temperature and CO2, and build a database of species traits with which to test a trait-based framework for understanding changes in species dominance in future ocean climates. This work will extend the impacts of our work to the global scale.******This program is designed to directly address critical shortcomings in our ability to project biotic responses to environmental change, and pushes the field of ecology towards a deeper mechanistic understanding of the role of the environment upon species interactions. We focus on climate change - and plan to engage with Canadian managers, policy-makers, and NGOs - in order to magnify the impacts of these results towards climate change adaptation strategies in Canada. This work will transform how we think about community interactions and climate change, and mark Canada as a leader in developing ecologically-grounded projections of climate change responses.