LTREB Renewal: Climatic drivers of temporal and spatial dynamics of a focal herbivore

地球的气候在40亿年中不断变化。最近这种变化的速度和方向的增加对国家的福利，农业经济和基本资源的管理提出了挑战。该项目提供了一个独特的机会，以确定短期气候影响导致长期人口变化的机制，影响当地人口之间的空间交换，并导致一些人口的灭绝。该项目的重点是一种常见的食草动物，毛熊毛虫，其结果有可能为有益的食草动物和有害的食草动物的保护和管理提供信息。更重要的是，该项目将通过让学生和教师参与监测毛毛虫的丰度来融入高中课程。来自科学领域代表性不足的群体的本科生和研究生也将通过参与该项目接受科学实践方面的培训。羊毛熊蛾，Platypia virginalis，是加州羽扇豆上的主要食草动物。研究人员已经积累了该物种长达30年的丰富数据，以及其种群动态的重要驱动因素，包括宿主植物，其他食草动物，捕食者，寄生虫，运动和气候条件。该项目将启动短期实验，以确定将气候因素与观察到的各种生境的丰度和分布模式联系起来的机制。 这些将评估自上而下的气候对捕食者的影响，自下而上的气候影响，通过一个促进相互作用，涉及第二草食动物物种，以及洪水和垃圾积累对毛虫生命率的影响。统计分析和数学模型将测试这些实验的推论，评估假设的机制是否会导致丰度的年际波动和改变空间动态，包括局部波动。 该项目很少将操纵性实验与模型开发和长期人口数据分析相结合。它将提供源-汇动态的有据可查的实例，这是一种数据仍然稀少的生态现象，并有可能成为气候变化对人口动态影响的典型实例。

The Earth's climate has changed continually over 4 billion years. The recent increased pace and direction of this change challenge the nation's welfare, the economics of agriculture, and the management of essential resources. This project provides a unique opportunity to identify the mechanisms by which short-term climatic effects cause long-term population changes, affect spatial exchanges between local populations, and result in the extinction of some populations. The project focuses on a common herbivore, the wooly-bear caterpillar, and results have the potential to inform conservation and management of beneficial as well as pest herbivores. More importantly, the project will be integrated into high school curricula by involving students and teachers in monitoring caterpillar abundances. Undergraduate students from groups under-represented in science and graduate students will also receive training in the practice of science through their participation in the project The wooly-bear moth, Platyprepia virginalis, is a primary herbivore on lupines in California. The investigators have accumulated up to 30 years of abundance data for this species and for important drivers of its population dynamics, including host plants, other herbivores, predators, parasitoids, movement, and climatic conditions. The project will initiate short-term experiments to identify mechanisms that causally link climatic factors to observed patterns of abundance and distribution across habitats. These will evaluate top-down effects of climate on predators, bottom-up climate effects through a facilitative interaction involving a second herbivore species, and the effects of flooding and litter accumulation on caterpillar vital rates. Statistical analyses and mathematical models will test inferences from these experiments, evaluating whether the hypothesized mechanisms cause inter-annual fluctuations in abundance and changing spatial dynamics including local extinctions. The project's combination of manipulative experiments with model development and analyses of long-term demographic data is rare. It will provide a well-documented example of source-sink dynamics, an ecological phenomenon for which data remain scarce, and is likely to become a classic example of the consequences of climate change for population dynamics.