Collaborative Research: Range Limits and Their Response to Environmental Change: Experiments and Stochastic Models

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。尽管每个物种的分布都被限制在一个特定的范围内，但决定物种范围边界的基本生态过程还没有被很好地理解，无法预测物种将如何应对环境变化。这个项目将调查三个主要问题。首先，是什么决定了范围限制？第二，范围限制的可变性有多大，哪些因素决定了这种可变性？第三，范围限制如何响应环境变化？也就是说，他们的反应有多快，他们的反应有多可预测或可变，因为随机群体过程产生了固有的可变性。这些问题将使用基于实验室的实验系统以及数学和统计建模来解决。了解是什么设定了范围限制及其可变性，对于理解和预测物种将如何应对气候变化和日益增加的气候可变性至关重要。这种理解对于物种的管理也是至关重要的——无论是那些不受欢迎的物种还是那些濒临灭绝的物种。只有将操作实验和数学建模相结合，才能在需要采取行动之前的可用时间内产生社会所需的理解。这种方法的额外好处是为研究生和本科生提供真正的跨学科培训和经验，并计划包括40多名本科生和2名研究生参与研究。两位研究人员都有从生物学研究中代表性不足的群体中招募本科生助理的良好记录。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Although the distribution of every species is limited to a particular range, the fundamental ecological processes that determine species' range boundaries are not understood well enough to predict how species will respond to environmental change. This project will investigate three overarching questions. First, what determines range limits? Second, how variable are range limits and what factors determine this variability? Third, how do range limits respond to environmental change? That is, how quickly do they respond and how predictable or variable are their responses given the inherent variability arising from random population processes? These questions will be addressed using a laboratory based experimental system together with mathematical and statistical modeling.Understanding what sets range limits and their variability is vital for understanding and forecasting how species will respond to climate change and to increasing variability in climate. This understanding is also vital for the management of species - both those that are undesirable and those that are endangered. Only a combination of manipulative experiments and mathematical modeling will yield the understanding needed by society over the available time before action is required. This approach has the additional benefit of providing real interdisciplinary training and experience for both graduate and undergraduate students, and plans are presented to include more than 40 undergraduate and 2 graduate students in the research. Both investigators have strong records of recruiting undergraduate assistants from groups typically underrepresented in biological research.