CRB: Dispersal and Disturbance as Factors Limiting the Distribution of Rare Plant Species

保护生物学和种群生物学几乎完全缺乏关于稀有物种新种群如何形成的信息。这个项目将通过将14种稀有植物的种子实验引入马萨诸塞州彼得沙姆哈佛森林的许多地点来研究扩散和干扰在新种群形成中的作用，这些植物似乎适合这些物种，但那里并不存在这些物种。在接下来的几年里，将对这些地点进行普查，以确定这些地点是否建立了稀有物种的种群。将使用幼苗和幼体移植、封育和其他程序来确定某些物种和地点种群建立失败的阶段。通过开发新的方法来建立更多的稀有物种种群，从而防止它们的灭绝，这一结果将对恢复生物学具有重要意义。

Conservation biology and population biology suffer from an almost complete lack of information on how new populations of rare species become established. This project will investigate the roles of dispersal and disturbance in the formation of new populations by experimentally introducing seeds of 14 rare plant species into numerous sites at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, which appear to be suitable for the species but where the species do not occur. The sites will be censused in subsequent years to determine if populations of rare species become established on these sites. Transplants of seedlings and juveniles, exclosures and other procedures will be used to identify the stages at which population establishment fails in certain species and sites. The results will be important to restoration biology by developing new methods to establish additional populations of rare species and so prevent their extinction.