Structure and functioning of ecological entities across levels of biological organization

跨生物组织层次的生态实体的结构和功能

• 批准号: RGPIN-2020-05796
• 负责人: Rodríguez, Marco
• 金额: $ 2.4万
• 依托单位: Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=717937
• 关键词: Structure; functioning; ecological; entities; across

Environmental variation influences ecological structure and function across multiple levels of biological organization and spatio-temporal scales. The physical environment affects properties of individual organisms, such as their growth and metabolic rates, and how they disperse, feed, and interact with other individuals. Because those individual properties influence higher levels of organization, environmental effects on individuals should propagate upwards and be expressed as functional differences at the population, community, and ecosystem levels. Accordingly, understanding and predicting ecological responses to the physical environment ideally requires a multilevel approach that combines observations and experiments conducted across organizational levels and spatio-temporal scales. Recent work in freshwater systems has shown that changes in ecosystem and food web structure are predictably linked to individual-level traits, such as body size and foraging mode. These traits are related to the movement scales of consumers at different trophic levels, and thus to the consumers' potential to feed on a broad range of resources and spatially couple distinct habitats. Furthermore, theory and observations show that consumer responses to resource variation between habitats may change predictably along natural environmental gradients, and that these differential consumer responses may have a profound influence on higher-level processes such as habitat coupling and trophic subsidies. The main goal of the proposed research is to examine the processes driving the spatial distribution of fish species in two adjacent macrohabitats, a large fluvial lake and its fringing floodplain. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding context-dependent responses, i.e., the interactive effects of functional traits and environmental gradients on key ecological processes, and their implications for structure and function across organizational levels, from the individual to the ecosystem. Identifying patterns that connect properties of individuals to those of higher levels of organization can yield insights into general processes and mechanisms that are applicable beyond a specific study system. This knowledge is useful to understand current human impacts and predict and manage future changes such as increasing water turbidity and temperature trends arising from changing land use and climate patterns. It also represents a step towards theory-based biomonitoring that incorporates scientific knowledge on interactions within trophic webs to capture functional relationships and their role in sustaining ecosystem function. For example, managers may be interested in whether the movements of large predators typically targeted by fisheries are critical to sustaining floodplain connectivity and production subsidies between macrohabitats.

环境变化对生态结构和功能的影响跨越生物组织和时空尺度的多个层次。物理环境影响个体生物体的特性，如它们的生长和代谢率，以及它们如何分散、喂养和与其他个体相互作用。因为这些个体属性影响更高层次的组织，环境对个体的影响应该向上传播，并表现为种群、群落和生态系统层次上的功能差异。因此，理想情况下，理解和预测对物理环境的生态反应需要一种多层次的方法，这种方法结合了在组织层面和时空尺度上进行的观察和实验。 淡水系统最近的研究表明，生态系统和食物网络结构的变化可以预见地与个体水平的特征有关，如身体大小和觅食模式。这些特征与消费者在不同营养水平的活动规模有关，因此与消费者以广泛的资源为食并在空间上耦合不同栖息地的潜力有关。此外，理论和观察表明，消费者对不同生境之间资源差异的反应可能会沿着自然环境梯度发生可预测的变化，这些不同的消费者反应可能会对生境耦合和营养补贴等更高层次的过程产生深远影响。 拟议研究的主要目标是研究在两个相邻的大生境--一个大河流湖泊及其边缘泛滥平原--鱼类物种空间分布的驱动过程。将特别强调理解依赖于环境的反应，即功能特征和环境梯度对关键生态过程的相互影响，以及它们对从个人到生态系统的组织各级的结构和功能的影响。 识别将个人的属性与组织的更高级别的属性联系起来的模式，可以深入了解适用于特定研究系统之外的一般过程和机制。这些知识有助于了解当前的人类影响，并预测和管理未来的变化，如由于土地利用和气候模式的变化而引起的水的浑浊和温度趋势的增加。它还代表着朝着以理论为基础的生物监测迈出了一步，该监测结合了关于营养网内相互作用的科学知识，以捕捉功能关系及其在维持生态系统功能方面的作用。例如，管理人员可能感兴趣的是，大型捕食者的活动是否对维持大型生境之间的泛滥平原连通性和生产补贴至关重要。