Collaborative Research: Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Local Extinctions: A 300-Year Experiment

物种灭绝是一个鲜为人知的过程，特别是在局部尺度上，因为很少有生态学数据集跨越足够长的时间段来揭示物种灭绝的模式。地球上可能没有一个地方在几个世纪以来，以十年的时间尺度连续仔细地观察和记录当地物种组合的变化。因此，许多关于环境变化后物种灭绝模式和速度的基本问题很难回答。例如，当地有多少物种已经消失？物种灭绝是在一场骚乱之后紧随其后，还是骚乱后的灭绝被推迟了，导致了未来需要偿还的“灭绝债务”？该项目收集的数据将开始填补科学家回答这些基本问题的能力有限的不足。传统上用来研究几千年来植物群落变化的古生物学技术将被用来研究过去几百年来植物群落的变化。种子、树叶碎片和花粉将在印第安纳沙丘受干扰湿地的沉积物岩心中进行分析，以创建一个从现在到大约300年前大约十年间隔的长期生态数据集。对这些长期数据的分析将通过提供衡量当前生态系统变化模式对未来意味着什么至关重要的信息，推动生态理论并帮助保护实践。该项目将为几名本科生、一名高中生、一名高中教师、一名技术员和一名博士后研究员提供培训和指导。该项目还将支持为K-12方案开发教育和宣传材料。

Species extinction is a poorly understood process, particularly at local scales, because there are few ecological data sets that span long enough time periods to reveal patterns of extinction. There is perhaps no single place on Earth where changes in the local assemblage of species have been carefully observed and documented continuously at a decadal time scale over several centuries. As a consequence, many basic questions about patterns and rates of species extinction following environmental change are difficult to answer. For example, how many species have been lost from local areas? Do extinctions follow immediately after a disturbance, or are post-disturbance extinctions delayed, resulting in an 'extinction debt' to be paid in the future? Data collected by this project will begin to fill a deficit that has limited scientists' ability to answer these basic questions. Paleontological techniques that have traditionally been used to study changes in plant communities over many thousands of years will be used to examine changes in plant communities in the past few hundred years. Seeds, leaf fragments, and pollen will be analyzed in sediment cores from disturbed wetlands in the Indiana Dunes to create a long-term ecological data set with approximately ten-year intervals from the present day to about 300 years ago. Analysis of these long-term data will advance ecological theory and aid conservation practice by supplying information critically needed to gauge what current patterns of ecosystem change mean for the future. This project will provide training and mentorship for several undergraduate students, a high school student, a high school teacher, a technician, and a postdoctoral researcher. The project will also support the development of educational and outreach material for K-12 programs.