Collaborative research: Quantifying the ecosystem-wide impacts of a strong interactor in African watersheds

该奖项将启动一项由加州大学伯克利分校和普林斯顿大学的生态学家、生物地球化学家和生态水文学家共同开展的研究工作，以研究常见的河马如何影响生态系统--以及这些生态系统的变化如何反过来影响河马。令人惊讶的是，人们对常见河马对它们所栖息的生态系统的重要性知之甚少，尽管它们被认为是一个脆弱和正在衰落的物种。河马白天在河流和浅水湖中休息，晚上出现在陆地上觅食。通过这些运动，这些大型食草动物跨越水生和陆地生态系统之间的边界转移了大量的营养和能量。这些联系可能对每种类型的生态系统的生态特性和过程产生重大影响。该项目将量化河马的运动生态，它们在生态系统中输送营养的速率，这些转移对受体生态系统的生态产生的影响，以及河流流量和降雨如何影响这些生态现象。这项工作将扩大我们对物质和能量转移如何影响整个景观的生态，相邻生态系统相互联系的密切程度，以及物理强迫如何决定这些联系的性质和重要性的一般理解。除了这些重要的科学贡献外，该项目还将为国内和国际博士后研究人员提供培训，让本科生参与研究，为公众创造创造性的科学媒体，并支持教育服务不足的农村地区的科学推广计划。

This award will initiate a collaborative research effort by ecologists, biogeochemists, and ecohydrologists at the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University to study how the common hippopotamus affects ecosystems - and how change to these ecosystems in turn affects the hippopotamus. Remarkably little is known about the importance of the common hippopotamus to the ecosystems that they inhabit, despite the fact that they are recognized to be a vulnerable and declining species. Hippopotamus rest in rivers and shallow lakes during the day and then emerge at night to feed on land. By virtue of these movements these large herbivores transfer vast quantities of nutrients and energy across the boundary between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. These connections are likely to have a major influence on ecological properties and processes in each type of ecosystem. The project will quantify the movement ecology of hippopotamus, the rates at which they vector nutrients across ecosystems, the impacts that these transfers have upon the ecology of recipient ecosystems, and how river flow and rainfall influence these ecological phenomena.This work will extend our general understanding of how transfers of material and energy influence the ecology of entire landscapes, how closely neighboring ecosystems are linked to one another, and how physical forcing determines the nature and importance of these connections. In addition to these important scientific contributions, this project will provide training for national and international postdoctoral researchers, involve undergraduates in research, generate creative science media for the general public, and support science outreach programs in educationally underserved rural settings.