Integration of demographics and genetics to understand wildlife responses to changing habitats, climate, and human disturbance

野生动物种群正在经历栖息地、气候和人类活动的前所未有的变化。一些最紧迫的生态学问题与了解动物将如何应对这些变化有关。理解物种的反应需要多种方法，需要在野生动物生态学中进行跨学科的整合。这项提案提出了一个跨方法论方法的整合计划，以解决种群生态学、栖息地选择和景观遗传学中的优先研究问题。 我和我的学生试图了解栖息地、气候和人类活动如何相互作用，影响野生动物种群的分布和丰度。在这个提案中，我概述了景观遗传学的大规模研究，重点是更大的鼠尾松鸡，范围从研究地点到物种的整个分布。景观遗传方法对于理解景观特征如何影响种群的功能连通性是不可或缺的。景观遗传研究很少包括所研究物种的种群人口统计数据，人口统计数据可以对遗传结构产生重要影响。动物在多个尺度上选择资源，多个尺度对结构连通性的影响一直是一个富有启发性的研究领域。我提议的研究将通过研究规模如何影响景观遗传学和人口统计学的整合来平行于这条线。这项研究代表着一个前所未有的机会，有望为人口统计学、遗传学和景观之间的关系提供新的见解。 长期以来，生态学家一直对种群周期感兴趣，从昆虫到有蹄类动物，种群周期无处不在。然而，尽管进行了广泛的研究，但在南纬地区，驱动种群周期的机制仍然知之甚少。这项提议将审查和量化推动大规模人口波动和相关性的机制。我们将开发模型来评估对人口周期背后的5个机械性假设的支持。这些因素包括密度依赖、气候、栖息地、管理和替代猎物。拟议的研究将评估和填补我们对这些大规模和普遍存在的人口波动模式的理解方面的重要空白。 这项研究的一个重要价值在于将景观的各个部分组合在一起，形成一个完整的、空间和时间上明确的整体。我将景观遗传学和其他复杂的建模方法应用于野生动物生态学，为种群波动、栖息地利用和功能连通性的过程提供了独特的见解，并提供了探索大空间尺度上野生动物反应的全面评估的难得机会。

Wildlife populations are experiencing unprecedented changes in habitat, climate, and human activities. Some of the most urgent ecological questions relate to understanding how animals will respond to these changes. Understanding species responses requires multiple approaches and integration across disciplines in wildlife ecology. This proposal presents a plan for integration across methodological approaches to address priority research questions in population ecology, habitat selection, and landscape genetics. My students and I seek to understand how habitat, climate, and human activities interact to influence the distribution and abundance of wildlife populations. In this proposal, I outline a study of large-scale research in landscape genetics, focusing on greater sage-grouse, that ranges from the study site to the entire distribution of the species. Landscape genetic approaches are integral to understanding how landscape features affect the functional connectivity of populations. Landscape genetic studies seldom include data on the population demography of the study species and demographics can have important impacts on genetic structure. Animals select resources at multiple scales and the influence of multiple scales on structural connectivity has been a fruitful and illuminating area of research. My proposed research will parallel this line of inquiry by examining how scale influences landscape genetics and the integration of population demographics. This research represents an unprecedented opportunity that promises to provide novel insights into the relationships among population demography, genetics, and landscapes. Population cycles have long been of interest to ecologists and are ubiquitous across animal taxa from insects to ungulates. However, despite extensive research, the mechanisms driving population cycles are still poorly understood at southern latitudes. This proposal will examine and quantify the mechanisms driving large-scale population fluctuations and correlations. We will develop models to assess support for 5 mechanistic hypotheses underlying population cycles. These include density dependence, climate, habitat, management, and alternative prey. The proposed research will assess and fill important gaps in our understanding of these large-scale and ubiquitous patterns of population fluctuations. A significant part of the value of this research lies in assembling the individual pieces of a landscape together into an integrated, spatially and temporally explicit whole. My application of landscape genetics and other sophisticated modelling approaches to wildlife ecology provides unique insights into the processes of population fluctuations, habitat use, and functional connectivity and the rare opportunity to explore a comprehensive assessment of wildlife responses across large spatial scales.