DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Quantifying the Strength of Spatial Coexistence Mechanisms in Experimental Metacommunities

了解促进生物多样性和允许多个物种共存的生态过程是保护和管理的基础。了解非生物环境（如光照或营养水平）如何从一个地方到另一个地方发生变化，以及多个物种的个体如何聚集在一起，往往被忽视，但至关重要。这项研究将开发一种方法来直接测量非生物环境中的结构和个体集群如何促进物种之间的共存。 将通过支持对一名博士生和一名大学生进行理论和实验生态学方面的教育和培训，加强科学工作者队伍，并将开发一个高中教学模块，使学生接触生态学方面的生物多样性实验，将通过将淡水微生物实验室实验系统与数学模型相结合，研究景观结构在促进多样性方面的作用。 将检验两个假设：（1）个体的聚集将是导致共存的主导机制，（2）随机性将通过削弱聚集效应而降低共存的强度。多样性的结果将检查水生微生物的多物种群落在复制的实验室实验，空间结构，物种丰度，扩散和非生物条件将系统地操纵。将开发针对实验系统的数学模型，以间接量化和比较不同共存机制的贡献。间接方法的性能，这是常用的量化共存，将评估对新的实验方法开发。拟议的工作将导致更深入地了解空间结构如何促进生物多样性。

Understanding the ecological processes that promote biological diversity and allow multiple species to coexist is fundamental for conservation and management. Understanding how the abiotic environment, such as light or nutrient levels, changes from place to place and how individuals of multiple species are clustered is often overlooked, but is critically important. This research will develop a method to directly measure how structure in the abiotic environment and in the clustering of individuals promotes coexistence between species. The scientific workforce will be strengthened through support for the education and training of a doctoral student and undergraduate students in theoretical and experimental ecology, and a high school teaching module will be developed to expose students to biological diversity experiments in ecology.The role of landscape structure in promoting diversity will be examined by combining a laboratory experimental system of freshwater microorganisms with mathematical models. Two hypotheses will be tested: (1) clustering of individuals will be the dominant mechanism leading to coexistence, and (2) stochasticity will reduce the strength of coexistence by weakening the effect of clustering. Diversity outcomes will be examined for multispecies communities of aquatic microorganisms in replicated laboratory experiments, where spatial structure, species abundance, dispersal, and abiotic conditions will be systematically manipulated. Mathematical models tailored to the experimental system will be developed to indirectly quantify and compare the contributions of different mechanisms of coexistence. The performance of the indirect method, which is commonly used for quantifying coexistence, will be assessed against the new experimental method developed. The proposed work will lead to a deeper understanding of how spatial structure promotes biodiversity.