RAPID: The role of disturbance in maintaining behavioral variation in native species

重大天气事件可能对人口产生长期影响，但由于恶劣天气的短暂性，这些影响可能难以衡量。飓风哈维为精确测试人类对极端天气的反应提供了机会。这项研究专门研究了一种普通蚂蚁在被摧毁的地区重新繁衍的行为。由于最近的气候模型预测严重风暴将变得更加常见，了解这些事件如何影响暴露于它们的本地物种种群，对于了解动植物生存的未来轨迹和重要物种的种群健康将变得越来越重要。这些知识可以用来制定有效的保护和保存策略，保护脆弱的物种和栖息地。这个项目利用了公众对蚂蚁如何应对洪水的兴趣，比如火蚁漂流，来帮助解释动物如何应对极端天气事件。它还为实践活动和课程计划提供了基础，这些活动和课程计划将分发给德克萨斯州的农村学校，包括与阿拉巴马-库沙塔部落公民有关的学校。最后，该项目的研究人员有强烈的承诺，招募代表性不足的少数民族参与这项工作。分散到新栖息地并成功殖民的能力取决于分散者的表型和生活史特征。在动物种群中，空间利用模式和范围扩张是固有的行为过程。因此，许多动物表现出与分散和范围扩张相关的独特形态和行为多态性。然而，很少有研究集中在局部灭绝事件后种群原生范围内的再殖民化模式，尽管可能对种群人口统计产生长期影响。这项研究利用了哈维飓风造成的独特环境，来询问原生受干扰栖息地的再殖民者是否具有预测的行为特征，以促进在新的非原生栖息地的殖民。本研究以Temnothorax属蚂蚁为研究对象，追踪了在哈维飓风洪水造成当地灭绝事件后，重新定居德克萨斯州东部大灌木丛国家保护区的蚁群的风险承受能力和生活史表型。这是通过使用标准化的攻击试验跟踪洪水后重建的菌落的风险承受能力来完成的。此外，在普通园林条件下保持一个繁殖周期，以衡量能量分配对生殖和体细胞维持的影响；这是生命史策略的代表。这项研究对干扰在维持行为变异方面的作用以及种群在灭绝事件后重新定居的能力提供了重要的见解。

Significant weather events may have long-term effects on populations, but these effects can be difficult to measure due to the ephemeral nature of severe weather. Hurricane Harvey has provided the opportunity to precisely test how populations respond to extreme weather. This study specifically looks at how individuals of a common ant species who are repopulating decimated areas behave. Because recent climate models predict severe storms will become more common, understanding how these events affect the populations of native species exposed to them will become increasingly important to understanding the future trajectory of plant and animal survival and the population health of important species. This knowledge can be used to shape effective conservation and preservation strategies and to protect vulnerable species and habitat. This project leverages the existing interest the public has in how ants respond to flooding, such as fire ant rafting, to help explain how animals respond to extreme weather events. It also provides a foundation for hands-on activities and lesson plans to be distributed to rural Texas schools, including schools associated with citizens of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe. Last, the researchers on this project have a strong commitment to recruiting underrepresented minorities to participate in this work.The ability to disperse to and successfully colonize new habitats is predicated on a disperser's phenotypic and life history traits. In animal populations, patterns of space use and range expansion are inherently behavioral processes. As such, many animals exhibit distinct morphological and behavioral polymorphisms associated with dispersal and range expansion. However, few studies have focused on patterns of recolonization in populations' native ranges after local extinction events, despite the potential for long-term effects on population demography. This study leverages the unique circumstances created by Hurricane Harvey to ask whether re-colonizers of native, disturbed habitat bear behavioral traits predicted to promote colonization in new, non-native habitats. Using ants of the genus Temnothorax, this study tracks the risk-tolerance and life-history phenotype of colonies recolonizing Big Thicket National Preserve in Eastern Texas after the local extinction event caused by Hurricane Harvey flooding. This is done by tracking the risk-tolerance of colonies re-establishing following floods with a standardized aggression assay. Additionally, colonies are kept in common garden conditions for one reproductive cycle to measure energetic allocation toward reproductive and somatic maintenance; a proxy for life-history strategy. This research provides significant insight into the role disturbance has in maintaining behavioral variation and thus a population's ability to recolonize after an extinction event.