DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The role of individual variation on predator-prey interactions and its joint effect with environmental temperature

生态学的一个重要目标是了解身体尺寸和体重等特征如何影响物种与环境相互作用的方式，以及它们如何生存和繁殖。为了做到这一点，生态学家长期以来一直在测量给定物种个体的平均特征。然而，越来越多的数学证据表明，平均数可能具有误导性，因为关于个体特征的差异如何以及差异有多大，很多信息都会丢失。这些差异反过来可能对我们理解物种能否在自然界中生存至关重要，但更重要的是，考虑到个体之间的这些差异可能对于准确预测种群将如何应对环境变化至关重要。这项研究将使用数学模型和实验来检验这些想法。通过量化个体变异对不同环境中关键过程的影响，这项研究将促进科学的进步，支持科学教育和多样性，并加强对科学的更广泛理解，尽管理论上有预测，但变异是否真的对生态动力学产生了可检测的影响，以及这种影响是否与环境温度等其他重要驱动因素相互作用，在很大程度上尚不清楚。该项目将采用数学模型和微观实验相结合的综合方法，量化个体表型变化和温度对觅食速度的联合影响。体型大小影响捕食活动的小型桡足类在原生动物身上的觅食速度将在不同的温度下进行量化。这些结果将阐明每个种群的这一基本被忽视的方面如何有助于更精确地预测生态变化，为如何应对气候变化提供决策依据。更广泛的影响将包括加强科学教育，让代表不足的群体和少数群体的本科生参与生态学的实验和理论方法，以及将在内布拉斯加州大学自然历史博物馆的儿童外联活动中举办关于捕食者-猎物动力学的外联活动，该活动将把无线电控制的机器人作为捕食者和猎物。

One important goal of ecology is to understand how characteristics, such as body dimensions and weight, among many others, affect the way species interact with their environment and how they survive and reproduce. To do so, ecologists have long measured average characteristics across the individuals of a given species. However, mounting mathematical evidence suggests that averages can be misleading, because much information is lost regarding how, and by how much, individuals differ in their characteristics. These differences may in turn be crucial to our understanding of whether species can survive in nature, but more importantly, taking these differences between individuals into account may be paramount to make accurate predictions about how populations will respond to environmental change. This research will test these ideas using both mathematical models and experiments. By quantifying the effects of individual variation on a critical process in different environments, the research will promote the advancement of science, support science education and diversity, and enhance broader understanding of science Despite theoretical predictions, whether variation actually has detectable effects upon ecological dynamics, and whether this effect interacts with other important drivers such as environmental temperature, is largely unknown. This project will quantify the joint effect of individual phenotypic variation and temperature on foraging rates using an integrative approach that merges mathematical models and microcosm experiments. Foraging rates of a small copepod, wherein body size affects predatory activity, on a protist will be quantified for different temperatures. These results will clarify how this largely overlooked aspect of every population may help to predict ecological changes with greater precision, informing decisions about how to respond to climate change. Broader impacts will include enhancement of science education by involving undergraduate students from underrepresented groups and minorities in experimental and theoretical approaches to ecology and through outreach activities on the predator-prey dynamics to be run in the "Science with a Scientist" childrens outreach event at the University of Nebraska Museum of Natural History that involves radio controlled robots as predators and prey.