Dissertation Research: Quantitative Interaction Strengths in Omnivorous Food Webs Across a Gradient in Primary Productivity

尽管它们在自然界中无处不在，但杂食动物影响其食物网稳定性和功能的方式仍然知之甚少。 两种方法主导了过去的调查：数学建模，并观察喂养关系，定性重建食物网。 这些方法产生了相互矛盾的预测杂食动物的重要性，这样的杂食动物如何影响他们的社区仍然没有实现的机械理解。 然而，将食物网的功能与其社区的生产力联系起来的生态学概念模型依赖于对杂食动物所起作用的强烈假设。 这里提出的研究采用了一种基于观测的方法来量化新西兰潮间带食物网物种相互作用的强度沿着自然生产力梯度。 因此，该项目将提供一个非常需要的评估的关键预测的机制，杂食性物种影响他们的community.Also提供了急需的联系之间的理论和经验领域的食物网生态学是必要的，以通知保护和资源利用的做法，这个研究项目将大大有助于我们的自然历史知识，这一欠研究的地区的世界。 在这样做的过程中，它将提供一个翔实的对比，更广泛地研究其他大陆的潮间带系统。

Despite their ubiquity in nature, the manner by which omnivores affect the stability and functioning of their food webs remains poorly understood. Two approaches have predominated past investigations: mathematical modeling, and the observation of feeding relationships to qualitatively reconstruct food webs. These approaches have produced conflicting predictions regarding the importance of omnivory such that a mechanistic understanding of how omnivores affect their communities remains unrealized. Seminal conceptual models of ecology that relate the functioning of food webs to the productivity of their communities rely on strong assumptions about the role that omnivores play however. The research proposed here employs an observation-based approach to quantify the strength of species interactions in food webs of the New Zealand intertidal along a natural productivity gradient. This project will thus provide a much needed assessment of key predictions concerning the mechanisms by which omnivorous species affect their communities.Aside from providing the much needed link between the theoretical and empirical realms of food web ecology that is necessary to inform conservation and resource-use practices, this research project will contribute greatly to our natural history knowledge of this understudied region of the world. In doing so, it will provide an informative contrast to the more extensively studied intertidal systems of other continents.