Novel Interactions and Adaptive Rewiring in Invasive Forest Insect Communities

全球化确保了入侵物种将继续到达，建立并对我们的生态系统造成重大破坏，导致重大的全球变化。拟议中的研究将通过提高对影响天敌调节其种群的社区相互作用的理解，提高我们在森林中管理这些物种的能力。具体来说，我探讨有关物种的相互作用，在社区多样性的变化，并在森林昆虫群落的新协会的问题，重点是了解本地和非本地天敌及其同伙之间的相互作用。NSERC-DG资金将使HQP支持昆虫-昆虫-植物相互作用的初级生态研究，以阐明物种组成和多样性随时间变化的驱动机制。物种间的相互作用是入侵理论的基础，也是我主要研究的主要方向。最近引进的非本地祖母绿灰螟（EAB），沿着与招聘的天敌从北美本土同类agrilid物种和实施经典的生物控制释放的亚洲天敌，提供了一个理想的模型系统，探索新的协会和机制，导致功能位移，物种重新布线，并在这些入侵的食物网溢出。在这里，我调查社区模式的新物种建立在森林社区在一系列的梯度，并要求本地agrilid组合转移类似意外（EAB）或故意（经典的生物控制）入侵后，通过物种营业额或重新布线。物种，社区，和植物地理数据将来自不同的森林梯度的树木多样性，城市化，EAB的建立，和天敌的引入，以量化的物种相互作用的程度，可以解释在社区组合的变化。我预测，天敌将从本地的Agrilus甲虫转移到EAB，这些新社区中的物种被重新连接，而不是被取代。这项初步研究的结果将增加我们对入侵后新关联的理解，其应用将引起科学家、生物控制研究人员和管理入侵物种的政策制定者的兴趣。我的提案要求资助HQP，这不仅将为新的相互作用和生态系统恢复力提供基础科学支持，而且还将为加拿大最重要的可再生资源-我们的森林-实现入侵生物学的独特能力。

Globalization ensures that invasive species will continue to arrive, establish, and cause significant disruption in our ecosystems, leading to major global change. The proposed research will increase our ability to manage such species in our forests through improved understanding of the community interactions that affect the natural enemies regulating their populations. Specifically, I explore questions related to species interactions, shifts in community diversity, and novel associations in forest insect communities, with focus on understanding interactions between native and non-native natural enemies and their associates. NSERC-DG funding will enable HQP support for primary ecological studies on insect-insect-plant interactions to elucidate mechanisms driving changes in species composition and diversity over time. Species interactions underpin invasion theory and are a major thrust of my primary research. Recent introduction of the non-native emerald ash borer (EAB), along with recruitment of natural enemies from native North American congeneric agrilid species and the implementation of classical biological control releases of Asian natural enemies, provides an ideal model system to explore novel associations and mechanisms leading to functional displacement, species rewiring, and spillover in these invaded food webs. Here, I investigate community patterns as new species establish in forest communities across a series of gradients and ask do native agrilid assemblages shift similarly after accidental (EAB) or intentional (classical bio-control) invasion, through species turnover or rewiring. Species, community, and biogeographic data will be derived across different forest gradients of tree diversity, urbanization, EAB establishment, and natural enemy introduction to quantify the degree of species interactions that can account for shifts in community assemblages. I predict that natural enemies will move from native Agrilus beetles on to EAB, and that species in these novel communities are rewired rather than replaced. Results from this primary research will add to our understanding of novel associations following invasion, and its application will be of interest to scientists, bio-control researchers, and policy-makers who regulate invasive species. My proposal requests funding to fuel the HQP that will not only provide the basic science underpinning on novel interactions and ecosystem resilience, but will also achieve unique capacity in invasion biology for Canada's most significant renewable resource, our forests.