Predator control of carrion resources and associated ecological heterogeneity

顶级掠食者在生态系统中扮演的角色仍然在研究人员和野生动物管理者之间争论不休。该项目将研究这些捕食者的新作用，即它们通过控制腐肉资源产生生物活动热点的能力。了解顶端捕食者的不同功能将有助于可持续的荒野管理，直接提高公民享受和欣赏荒野和野生动物的娱乐。该项目还将提高公众对顶级捕食者重要性的认识，提高社会对荒野和野生动物保护的认识。努力维持腐肉资源将有助于维持其他物种和生态系统的健康。研究人员将与美国国家公园的野生动物管理人员合作，开发教育地图，以供推广和解释。动物遗骸和清道夫活动在尸体现场创建的视觉吸引所有年龄段的学生。调查人员将与密歇根州西部上半岛科学、数学和环境教育中心合作，创建一个区域性的远程摄像机租借站和课程计划，用于记录尸体现场的生物活动。这些活动将使K-12教育工作者和学生参与腐肉生态学领域。腐肉发生在所有生物群落中。它代表了能量重要流动的瓶颈，并限制了具有深远生态和进化后果的营养物质。腐肉是各种群落的重要资源，它强烈影响着清道夫公会、生物多样性的维持和基本的生态过程。这项研究将调查控制腐肉资源，塑造尸体分布，并产生一个移动马赛克的生物地球化学和社区活动的捕食知之甚少的作用。将在四个陆地生态系统中讨论两组相互关联的问题：1）腐肉衍生的影响在多个生态系统和各种捕食者-被捕食者群落中如何变化？捕食如何影响腐肉在空间和时间上的分布？实验和实地研究将揭示主要生物群落的地上和地下腐肉效应。这种理解将与尸体的空间记录相结合，以研究捕食者对多尺度腐肉资源的控制。从实验，实地研究和尸体记录的数据将被纳入空间模型，研究捕食者腐肉动态和捕食控制腐肉资源流相比，死亡。焦点系统跨越一系列的生态系统和捕食者-猎物的多样性，并将产生一般的模式，并确定不同的差异，捕食者控制的腐肉资源在整个生物群落。 在研究捕食者控制腐肉资源，这项工作解决了两个基本重点在生态学的营养控制机制的社区和生态系统结构，并探讨了一个新的概念，可以添加到一个全面的观点捕食者的生态作用。

The roles that apex predators play in ecosystems are still debated among researchers and wildlife managers. This project will examine a novel role for these predators, which is their ability to generate hotspots of biological activity by controlling carrion resources. Understanding the diverse functions of apex predators will contribute to sustainable wilderness management, directly enhancing citizen enjoyment and appreciation of wilderness and wildlife for recreation. The project will also advance public awareness of the importance of apex predators, improving societal awareness of wilderness and wildlife preservation. Efforts to maintain carrion resources will help to sustain other species and ecosystem health. The investigators will work with wildlife managers in US National Parks to develop educational maps for outreach and interpretation. Animal remains and scavenger activity created at carcass sites are visually captivating to students of all ages. Investigators will partner with the Western Upper Peninsula Michigan Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education to create a regional remote camera lending depot and lesson plans for recording biological activity at carcass sites. These activities will engage K-12 educators and students in the field of carrion ecology.Carrion occurs in all biomes. It represents a bottleneck in the vital flow of energy and limiting nutrients with profound ecological and evolutionary consequences. Carrion constitutes a critical resource for a variety of communities and it strongly affects scavenger guilds, the maintenance of biodiversity, and fundamental ecological processes. This research will investigate the poorly understood role of predation in controlling carrion resources, shaping carcass distributions, and generating a shifting mosaic of biogeochemical and community activity. Two interrelated sets of questions will be addressed across four terrestrial ecosystems: 1) How do carrion-derived effects vary across multiple ecosystems and across a diversity of predator-prey communities? And 2) How does predation influence carrion distribution across space and time? Experiments and field studies will reveal above and belowground carrion effects across key biomes. This understanding will be coupled with spatial records of carcasses to examine predator control of carrion resources across multiple scales. Data from experiments, field studies and carcass records will be incorporated into spatial models to examine predator-carrion dynamics and predation controls over carrion resource flow compared to die-offs. The focal systems span a range of ecosystems and predator-prey diversity, and will yield both general patterns and identify distinct differences in predator control of carrion resources across biomes. In examining predator control of carrion resources, this work addresses both the fundamental focus in ecology on mechanisms of trophic control of community and ecosystem structure and explores a novel concept that can add to a comprehensive view of the ecological role of predators.