Spider sociality and community assembly

是什么决定了植物和动物群落的组成，这是生态学的核心问题，但由于大多数系统的空间尺度大，操作困难，这一问题并不容易解决。社会蜘蛛，以及在它们的网络上殖民的inquilines，是在多个尺度上解决社区和元生态学中关键问题的易处理系统。社会蜘蛛属Anelosimus在美洲各地的社区表现出不同的签名，在大陆规模的环境过滤和限制在当地规模的相似性。我们已经表明，环境过滤器反映了昆虫大小，降水强度和捕食风险，限制社会和亚社会物种的发生在某些栖息地的广泛规模的模式。我们将测试资源分配以及环境和时间异质性在这些社区生态位分化中的作用。我们假设，环境的异质性打开了不同的微栖息地的物种，不同的身体大小或社会性水平，这反过来，不同的猎物，他们捕获的大小。为了检验环境异质性和物种丰富度呈正相关的假设，我们将描述栖息地的社区，从1-5种在哥斯达黎加/巴拿马，厄瓜多尔和巴西。在选定的社区，我们将进行互惠巢移植实验，以测试预测，大多数功能不同的物种表现出最大的性能差异，在一个给定的微生境。这些社交及其他蜘蛛的三维网络港口inquiline节肢动物群落足够的独特性和稳定性，作为metaceritics模型。我们将调查在确定这些社区的组成的地方和全球过程的相互作用。我们建议，三维缩放作为主机网络大小的函数与环境生产力的相互作用，以确定资源流的主机和inquilines。这些因素不仅会影响围网的密度，而且会影响其多样性。宿主蜘蛛的行为，如巢穴卫生，也可能影响某些类型的发病率。为了验证这些假设，我们将评估组成的inquiline社区，主机inquiline的相互作用，和资源流量的主机和inquilines在厄瓜多尔的海拔和降水梯度。通过人工建立新的主机网络，我们将评估这些社区的组成中的本地和空间过程的作用。 拟议的项目追求两个新的方向来解决社区组成问题--认识到社区聚集中社会性水平的重要性，并使用3D蜘蛛网中的探究社区作为元社区分析的新经验系统。这两个易于处理的系统是一个强大的组合，可以在多个尺度上解决生态学的核心问题之一。

The question of what determines the composition of plant and animal communities is central to ecology, but one not easily addressed given the large spatial scales and difficult manipulation of most systems. Social spiders, and the inquilines that colonize their webs, are tractable systems to address key questions in community and metacommunity ecology at multiple scales. Communities of the social spider genus Anelosimus across the Americas exhibit the distinct signatures of environmental filtering at the continental scale and limiting similarity at the local scale. We have shown that the environmental filter reflects broad scale patterns of insect size, precipitation intensity and predation risk, which limit the occurrence of social and subsocial species to certain habitats. We will test the roles of resource partitioning and environmental and temporal heterogeneity in niche differentiation in these communities. We hypothesize that environmental heterogeneity opens up diverse microhabitats to species that differ in body size or level of sociality, which, in turn, differ in the size of prey they capture. To test the hypothesis that environmental heterogeneity and species richness are positively associated, we will characterize the habitats occupied by communities ranging from 1-5 species in Costa Rica/Panama, Ecuador, and Brazil. Within select communities, we will perform reciprocal nest transplant experiments to test the prediction that most functionally dissimilar species exhibit the greatest performance difference in a given microhabitat. The three-dimensional webs of these social and other spiders harbour inquiline arthropod communities of sufficient distinctness and stability to serve as models for metacommunities. We will investigate the interplay of local and global processes in determining the make up of these communities. We suggest that three-dimensional scaling as a function of host web size interacts with environmental productivity to determine flow of resources to hosts and inquilines. These factors may impact not only the density of inquilines, but also their diversity. Behaviours of the host spiders, such as nest hygiene, may also influence the incidence of certain inquiline types. To test these hypotheses we will assess the composition of inquiline communities, host-inquiline interactions, and flow of resources to hosts and inquilines across elevation and precipitation gradients in Ecuador. By artificially establishing new host webs we will assess the role of local and spatial processes in the make up of these communities. The proposed projects pursuit two novel directions to address the question of community composition-recognizing the importance of level of sociality in community assembly and using the inquiline communities in 3D spider webs as a new empirical system for metacommunity analysis. These two tractable systems make for a powerful combination to tackle one of the central questions in ecology at multiple scales.