DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The Roles of Evolutionary History and Ecological Interactions in the Maintenance of a High-Diversity Algal Assemblage

了解将物种组织成不同群落和生态系统的生态、环境和进化过程越来越重要，特别是在人类引起的环境干扰日益增加的情况下。物种是如何组成群落的，群落又是如何从干扰中恢复的？社区经历许多形式的干扰，包括非生物干扰，如温度和物理力量，以及生物干扰，如消费者吃社区成员。该项目探讨了东北太平洋潮间带海藻群落对干扰的反应，以了解群落在自然界中是如何组装的，以及它们在面对干扰时是如何维持的。潮间带是一个天然的实验室，潮汐周期在只有几米的范围内产生强烈的温度、干燥、食草动物和波浪力梯度。该项目利用海藻群落的野外实验、这些物种进化相关性的数据以及实验室中的生理测量来利用这些梯度。该项目将测量物种数量和丰富度的社区变化，物种的相关性和社区的功能能力，以应对实验操纵的环境和草食动物压力，以了解这些因素中的每一个如何有助于我们观察到的物种及其从干扰中恢复。该项目将有助于人们普遍了解生态群落对气候变化和物种引进等环境扰动的预期反应。海藻在海洋食物网基础上的主要作用使得了解其持久性的决定因素变得重要。由于世界上大部分人口生活在距离海岸100公里以内的地方，气候变化加剧了对初级生产者的环境影响，这是一个迫在眉睫的全球问题。该项目还将通过菲尔德自然历史博物馆促成一个互动式公共展览。普利兹克实验室，包括？与科学家小时交谈。此外，实地研究在Makah部落土地上进行，并将有助于在生态实地研究和生理实验室研究方面培训Makah实习生，并为这一生产性生态系统中的部落生物学家提供海洋气候数据。

Understanding the ecological, environmental and evolutionary processes that organize species into distinct communities and ecosystems is of growing importance, particularly in the face of increasing human-induced environmental disturbance. How are species organized into communities, and how do communities recover from disturbance? Communities experience many forms of disturbance, including abiotic disturbance such as temperature and physical forces and biotic disturbance such as consumers eating community members. This project explores community responses to disturbances in intertidal seaweed communities in the Northeast Pacific Ocean to understand how communities are assembled in nature, and how they are maintained in the face of disturbance. The intertidal zone is a natural laboratory, where the tidal cycle creates strong temperature, desiccation, herbivore and wave force gradients over a scale of only meters. This project exploits these gradients using field experiments with seaweed communities, data on the evolutionary relatedness of these species, and physiological measurements in the laboratory. The project will measure community changes in number and abundance of species, relatedness of species and functional capabilities of the community, in response to experimentally manipulated environmental and herbivore pressure, to understand how each of these factors contributes to the species we observe and their recovery from disturbance. The project will contribute to a general understanding of the expected response of ecological communities to environmental perturbations such as climate change and species introductions. The primary role of seaweeds at the base of marine food webs makes it important to understand the determinants of their persistence. With much of the world's population living within 100km of a coast, environmental effects on primary producers exacerbated by climate change are an immediate global concern. This project will also contribute to an interactive public exhibit, via the Field Museum of Natural History?s Pritzker Laboratory, including ?Talk to the Scientist Hour.? Further, field research takes place on Makah Tribal Lands, and will contribute to training Makah interns in ecological field studies and physiological lab studies and providing ocean climate data to Tribal biologists in this productive ecosystem.