U.S.-Venezuela Cooperative Research on Experimental and Evolutionary Demography: An Approach to the Ecology of Tropical Savanna Communities

这项美国-委内瑞拉奖将支持伍兹霍尔海洋研究所的哈尔·卡斯韦尔教授与委内瑞拉梅里达洛斯安第斯大学的胡安·席尔瓦教授合作进行一项研究。研究人员打算研究环境、遗传、发育和生活史相互作用产生一系列重要速率（即存活率、繁殖率、生长率等）的方式。通过将这些比率纳入适当的结构人口模型，可以利用数学分析来预测人口动态的格局以及这些格局对环境变化的敏感性。研究人员计划通过将理论种群模型与热带稀树草原植物种群的实验项目结合起来进行合作。理论研究将扩展用于分析人口统计学实验的统计工具，开发相互作用群体的矩阵模型，并将数量遗传学纳入复杂生活史的模型中。本实验研究将探讨一年生和多年生热带稀树草原植物对环境干扰的响应比较、热带稀树草原禾本科植物之间的竞争相互作用、种子休眠的演变以及这些因素共同决定稀树草原群落结构的方式。这种研究人口动态的方法是理解包括多样性、稳定性和共存在内的社区模式的最有力的方法。

This U.S.-Venezuela award will support Professor Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in a research collaboration with Professor Juan Silva of the Universidad de los Andes in Merida, Venezuela. The investigators intend to study the way in which the environment, genetics, development, and life history interact to produce a set of vital rates (i.e., rates of survival, reproduction, growth, etc.). By incorporating those rates into appropriate structured population models, mathematical analysis may be used to predict patterns of population dynamics and the sensitivity of those patterns to changes in the environment. The researchers plan to collaborate by combining theoretical population models with an experimental program on tropical savanna plant populations. The theoretical research will extend statistical tools for analyzing demographic experiments, develop matrix models for interacting populations, and incorporate quantitative genetics into models of complex life histories. The experimental research will address the comparative responses of annual and perennial savanna plants to environmental disturbance, competitive interactions among savanna grasses, the evolution of seed dormancy, and the way these factors combine to determine savanna community structure. This approach to population dynamics is a most powerful approach to understanding community patterns, including diversity, stability, and coexistence.