Community Structure and Stability: Linking Theory and Data

9806953艾夫斯是什么决定了生态群落的稳定性？这个问题不仅是生态学基础科学的核心，而且与土地管理和全球气候变化等广泛的实际问题有关。群落稳定性受群落结构的三个组成部分的影响：多样性、组成和物种间相互作用模式。从历史上看，生态学家对群落结构如何影响稳定性得出了截然不同的结论。在某种程度上，这是因为对社区稳定的理论分析并不容易映射到实际数据上。因此，在理论和实践中都没有解决社区稳定问题的共同框架。本研究将发展一个分析现实社区稳定性的理论框架。理论框架是基于随机自回归模型。自回归模型为从理论上研究社区结构的三个组成部分如何影响社区稳定性提供了一个灵活和通用的工具。使用自回归模型，还可以研究社区动态的多种特性，从而探索在概念上不同的方法来衡量社区稳定性。虽然自回归模型作为理论工具是有用的，但其主要优点是可以直接应用于分析时间序列数据。本研究将分析三个数据集：来自28个淡水湖的浮游动物实验数据集汇编，草原植物群落的实验数据，以及来自沙漠啮齿动物群落的长期实验研究数据。这些数据集的特定焦点问题各不相同，但它们都可以使用自回归框架来解决。通过理论与数据的结合，本研究将进一步深入了解群落结构与稳定性之间的关系。

9806953 Ives What determines the stability of ecological communities? This question is not only central to the basic science of ecology, but it is relevant to a wide range of practical issues such as land management and global climate change. Community stability is affected by three components of community structure: diversity, composition and pattern of interactions among species. Historically, ecologists have drawn very different conclusions about how community structure affects stability. In part, this is because theoretical analyses of community stability have not been easy to map onto real data. Therefore, there is no common framework for addressing community stability both in theory and in practice. This research will develop a theoretical framework for analyzing the stability of real communities. The theoretical framework is based on stochastic autoregressive models. Autoregressive models provide a flexible and general tool for investigating theoretically how all three components of community structure affect community stability. Using autoregressive models, it is also possible to investigate multiple properties of community dynamics, thereby exploring conceptually different ways to measuring community stability. Although autoregressive models are useful as theoretical tools, their main advantage is that they can be applied directly to analyze time-series data. This research will analyze three data sets: a compilation of zooplankton experimental data sets from 28 freshwater lakes, experimental data on prairie plant communities, and data from a long-term experimental study of a desert rodent community. The particular focal questions for each of these data sets are different, but they can all be addressed using an autoregressive framework. By combining theory and data, the proposed research will give more insight into the relationship between community structure and stability.