How Competition and Parasitism Control Diversity in Ant Communities: Testing a Mechanistic Theory

项目ASTRACT该项目旨在发现自然生态群落如何组合在一起的一般规则。这些规律的发现对于预测生物入侵的原因和后果、评估生物多样性对生态系统功能的影响、指导退化生态系统的恢复以及指导公共环境政策的制定具有重要的实用价值。我们之所以选择蚂蚁群落进行研究，是因为它们长期以来一直是研究控制物种丰富度、物种组成和物种相对丰度模式的生态过程的模型系统。这个项目的主要目标是开发和测试一个综合的，机械的理论物种相互作用在当地蚂蚁社区。这一理论的重点是一套种间的权衡作为一个一般的机制，控制物种丰富度，组成和丰富的蚂蚁社区。该项目将首次尝试开发蚂蚁群落中物种相互作用的综合理论，该理论整合了共享资源竞争和天敌攻击的影响。识别与竞争能力和防御天敌相关的广义权衡的方法应该具有广泛的适用性，并导致对生态群落的普遍理解的有效和快速的进展。除了建议的研究，这个项目的主要教育目标是开始培养新一代的社区生态学家谁是同样擅长理论建模和实证分析。

PROJECT ASTRACTThis project seeks to discover the general rules that govern how natural ecological communities are put together. Discovery of these rules will have immense practical value in predicting the causes and consequences of biological invasions, evaluating the influence of biodiversity in ecosystem functions, directing the restoration of degraded ecosystems, and guiding the development of public environmental policy. We have selected ant communities for study because they have long served as a model system for studying ecological processes that control patterns of species richness, species composition and relative abundance of species. The primary goal of this project is to develop and test an integrative, mechanistic theory of species interactions in local ant communities. This theory focuses on a set of interspecific trade-offs as a general mechanism that controls species richness, composition and abundance in ant communities. The project will be the first attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of species interactions in ant communities that integrates the effects of both competition for shared resources and attack by natural enemies. The approach of identifying generalized trade-offs associated with competitive ability and defense against natural enemies should have broad applicability and lead to efficient and rapid progress toward a general understanding of ecological communities. In addition to the proposed research, the major educational goal of this project is to begin training a new generation of community ecologists who are equally adept at theoretical modeling and empirical analysis.