OPUS: Synthesizing Ecology with Ecological Networks

为了更好地理解地球？S海洋、湖泊、森林和农场等生态系统如何维持包括人类在内的物种的需求，生态科学需要提高其严谨性、精确度和预测力。这些进展将使我们能够更好地了解人类与自然的相互作用，并提高我们预测环境变化将如何影响未来自然和农业生态系统提供的服务的能力。为了实现这些目标，这个项目将综合首席研究员和他的亲密同事30年来对具有许多物种的生态系统的组织方式及其随时间变化的预测理论的研究。这一理论的核心是基于生物体消耗资源、生长和被其他生物体消耗的能力，以及这些消费者与资源在数十、数百和数千个物种之间相互作用的网络结构。这一一般理论的要素已经发表在100多篇论文中，其中大多数是由该项目的首席研究员单独或与人合著的。所有这些论文中的想法是如何结合在一起的，包括理论、它的基础和未来的方向，还有待充分的综合和阐明。这个项目将以一本书、一篇评论文章、可视化和视频动画的形式描述这一综合框架，这些内容定义了该理论背后的概念、方程和计算机模拟。这项研究还将增加生态网络理论对更广泛受众的可及性，并促进研究人员的职业生涯，这些研究人员是科学中代表性较低的群体的成员。本项目将基于消费者-资源理论与网络理论和生态学的新陈代谢理论相结合，综合关注食物网及其包括互惠和寄主-寄生虫/病原体网络在内的两部分子集的结构、动力学和进化的理论。这包括描述异速生长营养网络的概念和计算理论及其在生态、进化和可持续发展科学中的应用，包括对物种丧失、捕鱼和气候变化的量化后果的预测。进一步发展的目标是推进生态学的系统生物学，通过整合其子学科，特别是有机学、种群、群落和生态系统生态学，以及生态学与进化科学、社会科学、可持续发展科学和网络科学之间的接口来合成生态学。对社会的好处包括增加我们对生态系统管理和生态进化以及自然-人类耦合动力学的理解。为期两年的研究和写作将包括对国际和国内网络和生态网络研究中心的合作访问。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

To better understand how earth?s ecosystems such as oceans, lakes, forests and farms sustain the needs of species, including humans, the science of ecology needs to increase its rigor, precision, and predictive power. Such advances will enable a better understanding of human interactions with nature and improve our ability to forecast how environmental change will affect services provided by natural and agricultural ecosystems in the future. To reach these goals, this project will synthesize three decades of the principle investigator's and his close colleagues' research into a predictive theory of the way ecosystems with many species are organized and how they change over time. The core of this theory is based on organisms' abilities to consume resources, grow, and be consumed by other organisms as well as the network architecture of these consumer-resource interactions among tens, hundreds and thousands of species. Elements of this general theory have been published in over one hundred papers, most of which are sole or co-authored by this project's principle investigator. How the ideas in all these papers fit together, including the theory, its foundations, and future directions have yet to be adequately synthesized and articulated. This project will describe that synthetic framework in the form of a book, a review article, visualizations and video animations that define the concepts, equations and computer simulations underlying the theory. This research will also increase the accessibility of ecological network theory to broader audiences, and advance the careers of researchers who are members of groups underrepresented in the sciences.This project will synthesize theory focused on the structure, dynamics, and evolution of food webs and their bipartite subsets including mutualistic and host-parasite/pathogen networks based on integrating consumer-resource theory with network theory and the metabolic theory of ecology. This involves describing the conceptual and computational theory of allometric trophic networks and its application to ecological, evolutionary and sustainability sciences including predictions of the quantitative consequences of species loss, fishing, and climate change. Further development aims to advance a systems biology of ecology that synthesizes ecology by integrating its subdisciplines, especially organismal, population, community and ecosystem ecology, as well as the interface between ecology and evolutionary, social, sustainability, and network sciences. Benefits to society include increasing our understanding of ecosystem management and eco-evolutionary and coupled natural-human dynamics. Two years of research and writing will be conducted involving collaborative visits to international and domestic centers of network and ecological network research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.