Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology for FY 2009

这项行动为2009财政年度的NSF博士后研究奖学金提供资金。该研究金支持Winifred弗里克的一项研究和培训计划，题为“应用生物信息学和新的可视化工具量化大气层中蝙蝠的动物扩散和种群动态”。这项研究的主办机构是波士顿大学，赞助科学家是托马斯昆兹。空气生态学的重点是了解生态功能和生物的重要性，依赖于大气层的关键方面，他们的生活史的生物。 研究飞行动物（鸟类、蝙蝠和节肢动物）在大气层中的行为和运动带来了相当大的挑战，需要创造性地整合数据采集和分析的技术解决方案。遥感工具，如多普勒雷达，为在广泛的空间和时间尺度上调查空气生态过程和动力学提供了很大的希望。 本研究应用新的三维可视化算法的NEXRAD雷达图像的空间上明确的分析模型的巴西无尾蝙蝠的空气动力学，以确定动物的扩散和运动模式。 校准的体积渲染的三维蝙蝠“云”正在开发的普查计数来自热红外成像数据，估计空中人口规模和测试生物学假设气候变化对巴西自由尾蝙蝠的人口动态的影响。研究结果有助于通过确定迁徙走廊和季节性觅食区来保护环境，这将有助于决定不将风能设施放在哪里，风能设施的作用是迁移蝙蝠种群的死亡率下降。 巴西无尾蝙蝠通过消耗大量的棉花和玉米作物害虫来提供宝贵的生态系统服务。 研究结果预测了气候变化对农业的潜在经济成本，通过一个重要的害虫捕食者的生态系统服务价值的损失。 培训目标包括提高遥感、可视化和图像分析、人口建模和地理信息系统方面的定量技能。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009. The fellowship supports a research and training plan entitled "Application of bioinformatics and novel visualization tools for quantifiying animal dispersal and population dynamics of bats in the aerosphere" for Winifred Frick. The host institution for this research is Boston University, and the sponsoring scientist is Thomas Kunz. Aeroecology focuses on understanding ecological function and biological importance of organisms that rely on the aerosphere for critical aspects of their life history. Studying behavior and movement of volant animals (birds, bats, and arthropods) in the aerosphere presents considerable challenges, requiring creative integration of technological solutions for data acquisition and analysis. Remote sensing tools, such as Doppler radar, offer much promise for investigating aeroecological processes and dynamics at broad spatial and temporal scales. This research applies new three-dimensional visualization algorithms to a spatially-explicit analysis of NEXRAD radar images to model aerial dynamics of Brazilian free-tailed bats in order to determine animal dispersal and movement patterns. Calibration of volume-rendered 3D bat "clouds" are being developed from census counts derived from thermal infrared imaging data to estimate aerial population sizes and test biological hypotheses about influences of climate change on population dynamics of Brazilian free-tailed bats. The results contribute to conservation by identifying migratory corridors and seasonal foraging areas, which will help inform decisions on where not to place wind energy facilities, which function as mortality sinks to migratory bat populations. Brazilian free-tailed bats perform valuable ecosystem services by consuming metric tons of insect pests that infest cotton and corn crops. The results predict potential economic costs of climate change on the agricultural industry through loss of ecosystem service value of an important pest predator. Training objectives include advancing quantitative skills in remote sensing, visualization and imagery analysis, population modeling, and GIS.