Collaborative Research: Mechanisms Influencing Seedling Recruitment and Establishment in a Fragmented Amazonian Landscape

热带地区的森林砍伐正在以前所未有的速度继续，导致物种丰富的雨林支离破碎。破碎化最常见的后果之一是减少幼苗的建立，特别是在森林林下植被中发现的物种。这项建议有两个目标。首先，Bruna和Uriarte将确定安全地点和种子限制如何相互作用，以影响亚马逊林下植物Heliconia acuminata的招聘。第二，该项目将确定这些过程在森林片断中是如何改变的。这些目标将使用一个创新的空间明确的建模框架加上实地研究来解决。 尽管有充分的证据表明，耐荫植物物种的招聘下降的森林片段，几乎没有什么是已知的机制，栖息地破碎化影响植物招聘。通过提高我们对这些机制的理解，这项工作将有助于改善热带森林的管理和保护工作。此外，这项研究提供了一个独特的机会，调查一个中心问题，在植物生态学与林下草本植物，一组植物，是生态关键，但明显不足。最后，它将促进两名少数民族科学家的职业生涯，并为本科生，研究生和博士后研究人员提供支持，以研究亚马逊生态系统的生态学。

Deforestation in the tropics is continuing at rates that lack historical precedent, resulting in the fragmentation of species-rich rain forests. One of the most common consequences of fragmentation is reduced seedling establishment, particularly for species found in the forest understory. This proposal has two objectives. First, Bruna and Uriarte will determine how safe-site and seed limitation interact to influence the recruitment of Heliconia acuminata, an Amazonian understory plant. Second, the project will ascertain how these processes are altered in forest fragments. These objectives will be addressed using field studies coupled with an innovative spatially-explicit modeling framework. Despite ample evidence that the recruitment of shade-tolerant plant species declines in forest fragments, almost nothing is known about the mechanisms by which habitat fragmentation influences plant recruitment. By advancing our understanding of these mechanisms, this work will help improve management and conservation efforts for tropical forests. Furthermore, this study provides a unique opportunity to investigate a central issue in plant ecology with understory herbs, a group of plants that is ecologically critical but conspicuously understudied. Finally it will advance the career of two minority scientists and provide support for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers to study the ecology of Amazonian ecosystems.