Dissertation Research: Evaluation of a Hypothetical Model of Local Community Assembly in a Temporally Dynamic, Species Rich Neotropical River

时间动态、物种丰富的新热带河流DEB 0107456群落聚集假设模型的评价摘要本研究结果将进一步加深我们对生物群落结构和形成的认识。自然群落受环境特征和组成生物之间相互作用的影响。了解这些因素及其相互作用的相对重要性与保护健康社区和恢复受损社区高度相关。本研究探讨了热带洪泛平原河流中群落聚集的时空动态。我们之前的工作已经证明了当地鱼类和无脊椎动物群落的一致模式取决于自然栖息地的复杂性和季节动态。在这项研究中，我们将进行野外实验，操纵不同物理复杂性的栖息地斑块，以评估物理和生物因素对物种定殖的相对重要性。我们的实验设计也将使我们能够确定随机和确定性过程在当地社区形成中的相对重要性。换句话说，我们希望确定当地的生物群落是否只是碰巧找到一个可用的栖息地补丁的个体和物种的集合，或者社区成员是否来自物种相互作用，如竞争和捕食。基于先前的描述性研究，我们假设非随机过程导致鱼类和无脊椎动物群落在低水位期间高度图案化，而在每年的洪水期间，当地栖息地的殖民化变得更加随机。

Evaluation of a hypothetical model of local community assembly in a temporally dynamic, species rich neotropical river DEB 0107456; PI: Kirk O. Winemiller, Co-PI: D. Albrey ArringtonAbstractResults from this study will further our understanding of biological community structure and formation. Natural communities are affected by characteristics of the environment and interactions among constituent organisms. Understanding the relative importance of these factors and their interactions is highly relevant to the preservation of healthy communities and restoration of damaged communities. Our study investigates the temporal and spatial dynamics of community assembly in a tropical floodplain river with very high biodiversity. Our previous work has demonstrated consistent patterns in local fish and invertebrate communities that depend on physical habitat complexity and seasonal dynamics. In this study, we will conduct field experiments that manipulate habitat patches with variable physical complexity to evaluate the relative importance of physical and biological factors for species colonization. Our experimental design also will allow us to determine the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in the formation of local communities. In other words, we hope to determine whether or not local biological communities are simply collections of individuals and species that happened to find an available habitat patch, or if community membership results from species interactions such as competition and predation. Based on previous descriptive research, we hypothesize that nonrandom processes result in highly patterned fish and invertebrate communities during the low-water period, and that colonization of local habitats becomes more random during the annual flood period.