SG: The demographic and life-history consequences of re-colonizing secondary habitats

热带森林是地球上最多样化和最复杂的生态系统之一。它们也是向农业转化的最具生产力的系统之一，导致大规模的森林砍伐和曾经生活在这些森林中的野生动物的局部灭绝。虽然为农业用途而砍伐热带森林仍然很普遍，但社会和经济力量正在将人们的注意力转移到城市的制造业工作岗位上，并导致放弃农业地区。因此，森林开始重新生长，并通过一个被称为演替的过程扩张。再生林，称为“次生林”，与原始森林不同；它们有更小的树木和更少的树冠覆盖。最终，随着森林砍伐而消失的野生动物将重新定居在这些次生林中。这个项目将研究野生动物如何在次生林中找到和生活。研究人员将把重点放在小蜥蜴身上，并测试关于哪些个体能够在森林中茁壮成长以及它们为什么能够这样做的想法。结果对于森林和野生动物的管理都很重要，因为两者都在人类的影响下发生变化。范围扩展理论为研究野生动物重新定居次生栖息地的生态、遗传和进化机制提供了一个可测试的框架。该理论做出了四个基本预测：一个重新定居的种群将(1)由高度分散的个体组成，(2)经历更高的种群增长率，(3)经历逃离和释放天敌，以及(4)与源种群相比具有更低的遗传多样性。这项研究采用了跨学科的方法，结合了观察研究、实地实验、人口统计学建模和基因组分析，在Anolis gundlachi身上验证了这些预测。Anolis gundlachi是一种树荫森林专家蜥蜴，在波多黎各大规模森林恢复后重新定居次生林。我们了解再殖民的一般模式，表明次生林20年可以容纳高达92%的原生林物种。本研究将通过对次生林再定植过程中驱动生活史特征进化的过程和机制的多尺度评估，推动该领域的发展。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Tropical forests are one of the most diverse and complex ecosystems on earth. They are also one of the most productive systems for conversion to agriculture, leading to large scale deforestation and local extinction of wildlife that once lived in those forests. While tropical deforestation for agricultural uses is still common, social and economic forces are shifting attention to manufacturing jobs in cities and resulting in abandonment of agricultural areas. As a result, forests are starting to re-grow and expand through a process called succession. The re-growing forests, called "secondary" forests, are different from the original forests; they have smaller trees and less canopy cover. Eventually, the wildlife that were lost with deforestation will re-colonize these secondary forests. This project will examine how wildlife find and live in secondary forests. The investigators will focus on small lizards and test ideas about which individuals are able to thrive in the forests and why they are able to do so. Results will be important for management of both forests and wildlife, as both change under human influences. Range expansion theory provides a testable framework to study the ecological, genetics and evolutionary mechanisms driving the recolonization of secondary habitats by wildlife species. This theory makes four fundamental predictions: A recolonizing population will (1) be composed highly dispersive individuals, (2) experience higher population growth rates, (3) experience escape and release from natural enemies, and (4) have lower genetic diversity when compared to the source population. The study follows an interdisciplinary approach that combines an observational study, a field experiment, demographic modeling and genomic analyses to test these predictions in Anolis gundlachi, a shaded-forest-specialist lizard re-colonizing secondary forests following large-scale forest recovery in Puerto Rico. We understand the general patterns of re-colonization showing that secondary forests of 20 years can hold up to 92% of old-growth forest species. This study will advance the field through a robust multi-scale evaluation of the processes and mechanisms driving the evolution of life-history traits during secondary forest re-colonization.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.