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。拟议的研究将通过提高对影响天敌调节其种群的群落相互作用的理解，提高我们在森林中管理这些物种的能力。具体来说，我探讨了与物种相互作用、群落多样性变化和森林昆虫群落新关联相关的问题，重点是了解本地和非本地天敌及其同伴之间的相互作用。NSERC-DG的资助将使HQP能够支持昆虫-昆虫-植物相互作用的初级生态学研究，以阐明驱动物种组成和多样性随时间变化的机制。物种间的相互作用是入侵理论的基础，也是我主要研究的重点。最近引入的非本地祖母绿灰螟（EAB），以及从北美本土同类农业物种中招募的天敌和亚洲天敌的经典生物防治释放的实施，为探索这些入侵食物网中导致功能位移、物种重新连接和溢出的新关联和机制提供了一个理想的模型系统。在这里，我研究了新物种在森林群落中建立时的群落模式，并询问在偶然（EAB）或故意（经典生物控制）入侵后，通过物种更替或重新连接，本地农业网格组合是否会发生类似的变化。物种、群落和生物地理数据将在树木多样性、城市化、EAB建立和天敌引入的不同森林梯度中得到，以量化物种相互作用的程度，这可以解释群落组合的变化。我预测天敌将从本地的Agrilus甲虫转向EAB，这些新群落中的物种将被重新连接，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，其应用将对科学家，生物防治研究人员和管理入侵物种的政策制定者感兴趣。我的提案要求为HQP提供资金，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——提供独特的入侵生物学能力。

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.