Factors which influence trophic metacommunities across landscape gradients

影响景观梯度营养元群落的因素

• 批准号: RGPIN-2021-03611
• 负责人: Clare, Elizabeth
• 金额: $ 2.77万
• 依托单位: York University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=745653
• 关键词: Factors; influence; trophic; metacommunities; across

Habitat change and biodiversity loss threaten every ecosystem and natural process on earth. While considerable emphasis has been placed on measuring biodiversity, less focus has been placed on accurately and rapidly measuring how communities of species interact (e.g. parasites and hosts, animals and plants) and the structure of discrete but interacting communities across landscapes. As a consequence, quantifying and mitigating the effects of habitat alteration and identifying species at risk or resilient to environmental change is one of the foremost challenges in conservation biology. My objective is to establish how interactions among species (e.g. host-parasite relationships) and the environment shape community structure across multiple trophic levels (plants-animals-parasites-microbial life). My goal is to use these data to identify key traits which make species resilient to environmental changes and highlight those at most risk so that we can better prioritize conservation efforts and accurately model ecosystem changes. I propose to measure how plants, bats, their parasites and microbes interact with each other and the environment in fragmented Neotropical forest. This community provides vital seed dispersal functions and is responsible for much of the natural reforestation activity and movement of keystone species of plant critical to the restoration of this habitat. As such, understanding the factors which influence the persistence of these communities is essential to restoration ecology. We will use the latest in DNA technologies to determine: 1) Whether specific habitat characteristics (e.g. size and complexity of the forest) or individual species' traits (e.g. hardness of fruit and wing and skull morphology of bats) are most important in maintaining species within these habitats and thus promoting seed dispersal. 2) How habitat factors shape multi-trophic communities and the reciprocal influences of host-parasite interactions on the structure within and between communities across fragments. 3) Which environmental conditions and species' traits permit an individual who normally consumes fruit and disperses seeds to change behaviour to exploit insects as food or permits some insectivorous individuals to specialize on a subset of the available prey when under stress. Our research measures changes in biodiversity and species' interactions across multiple scales from individuals to landscapes and represents a truly novel and comprehensive approach to study complex multi-trophic level communities. This will lay the foundation for identifying traits which make a species resilient or at risk from changing environmental conditions and provide exciting training opportunities for students in how to apply the latest in genetic techniques to study cutting edge model systems.

栖息地的变化和生物多样性的丧失威胁着地球上的每个生态系统和自然过程。虽然人们相当重视衡量生物多样性，但对准确和快速衡量物种群落(例如寄生虫和宿主、动物和植物)的相互作用以及不连续但相互作用的景观群落结构的关注较少。因此，量化和减轻栖息地变化的影响并确定面临环境变化风险或恢复能力的物种是保护生物学中最重要的挑战之一。我的目标是确定物种之间的相互作用(例如宿主-寄生虫关系)和环境如何塑造多个营养级别(植物-动物-寄生虫-微生物生命)的群落结构。我的目标是利用这些数据来识别使物种对环境变化具有弹性的关键特征，并突出那些风险最大的特征，以便我们能够更好地优先考虑保护工作，并准确地模拟生态系统的变化。我建议测量植物、蝙蝠、它们的寄生虫和微生物如何相互作用，以及在支离破碎的新热带森林中如何与环境相互作用。该群落提供重要的种子传播功能，并负责大部分自然再造林活动和对恢复这一栖息地至关重要的关键植物物种的迁移。因此，了解影响这些群落持久性的因素对恢复生态学是至关重要的。我们将使用最新的DNA技术来确定：1)特定的栖息地特征(例如森林的大小和复杂性)或个别物种的特征(例如蝙蝠的果实和翅膀的硬度和头骨形态)对于维持这些栖息地中的物种从而促进种子传播是最重要的。2)生境因子如何塑造多营养群落，以及寄主-寄生虫相互作用对群落内部和群落间跨片段结构的相互影响。3)哪些环境条件和物种特征允许通常食用水果和散播种子的个体改变行为以利用昆虫作为食物，或者允许一些食虫个体在受到压力时专攻可获得的猎物的子集。我们的研究测量了从个体到景观的多个尺度上生物多样性和物种相互作用的变化，代表了一种真正新颖和全面的方法来研究复杂的多营养级群落。这将为确定使物种适应或面临环境条件变化风险的特征奠定基础，并为学生提供令人兴奋的培训机会，指导他们如何应用最新的遗传技术来研究尖端模型系统。