Structuring Mechanisms of Ecological Communities

非生物（如气候，物理环境）和生物（如捕食，竞争）过程，沿着随机的机会（如，严重的风暴，火灾）是已知的相互作用和它们的影响是通过空间过程介导的，最终决定了单个物种的分布及其聚集的产品，生态群落。研究表明，各个因素在决定群落组成方面的相对重要性可能有所不同。此外，它已被证明，这样的研究可能会受到选择的措施，考虑到表征社区（例如，分类组成，身体大小，功能特征，如它们是否是捕食者或需要温暖的温度），考虑的空间和时间尺度，以及研究的物种类型（例如，植物，鸟类）。 拟议的研究将研究在生物多样性（物种分类，物种形态，物种的进化相关性和物种功能性状测量）的鱼类在近10,000个安大略湖泊的关系，并测试这些不同的措施是否响应类似的环境条件。使用数据从>1000个湖泊已多次采样，我将回答查尔斯达尔文提出的基本问题，关于入侵物种和社区组成，以评估最有可能成为成功的入侵者的物种类型，以及它们对接收社区的影响。我将比较湖泊鱼类群落从安大略和欧洲湖泊，以确定是否环境条件选择了类似的生态结果（收敛）的形态和功能特征的社区，尽管物种在很大程度上是不相关的通过进化。我将使用湖泊温度和鱼类生长的模拟，沿着实地采样来测试我们是否可以预测更有可能作为Smallmouth Bass沿着其北方分布范围的殖民点的湖泊类型，因为它是一种扩大其范围的物种，并且已知在它殖民的湖泊中具有重要影响。生态学家和进化生物学家通常有多组数据，这些数据基于相似的测量（例如不同鱼类的形态），必须相互比较。我们知道，这些比较对不寻常的观察结果非常敏感（例如，一条鱼的一个部分变形），但我们目前没有非常适合的方法来最大限度地减少这种不寻常的观察结果的影响。我将开发和评估方法，这些方法将提供强大的统计方法，适合分析具有这种挑战性条件的观测结果，并开发一个统计软件包，可供生态学和进化生物学研究人员使用，因为这些类型的问题在我们的领域中很常见。

Abiotic (eg, climate, physical environment) and biotic (eg, predation, competition) processes, along with random chance (eg, severe storms, fire) are known to interact and their effects to be mediated through spatial processes, ultimately determining the distribution of individual species and their aggregated products, ecological communities. Studies have shown respective factors can vary in their relative importance in determining community composition. Also, it has been shown that such studies may be influenced by choice of measure considered to characterize the community (eg, taxonomic composition, body size, functional traits such as whether they are predators or require warm temperatures), the spatial and temporal scale considered, and the type of species studied (eg, plants, birds). The proposed research will study relationships in biodiversity (measured on species taxonomy, species morphology, evolutionary relatedness of species, and species functional traits) of fishes in nearly 10,000 Ontario lakes and test whether these different measures respond similarly to environmental conditions. Using data from >1000 lakes that have been sampled multiple times, I will answer fundamental questions posed by Charles Darwin about invasive species and community composition to assess the types of species most likely to be successful invaders and what impact they have on the recipient community. I will compare lake fish communities from Ontario and European lakes to determine whether environmental conditions have selected for similar ecological outcomes (convergence) on the morphology and functional traits of communities, despite the species being largely unrelated through evolution. I will use simulations of lake temperature and fish growth, along with field sampling to test whether we can predict the types of lakes that are more likely to serve as colonization points for Smallmouth Bass along its northern distribution range, as it is a species expanding its range and known to have important effects within lakes where it colonizes. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists often have multiple sets of data, based on similar measurements (e.g. morphology of different fish species) that must be compared to one another. We know that these comparisons are very sensitive to unusual observations (e.g. a deformation on one part of one fish), yet we do not currently have methods well suited to minimize the effect of such unusual observations. I will develop and assess methods that will provide powerful statistical methods suitable to analyse observations having such challenging conditions, and develop a statistical package available to researchers in ecology and evolutionary biology, as these types of problems are common across our fields.