CAREER: Integrating Neoecological and Paleoecological Approaches to Exploring the Effects of Climate Change on Arthropod Diversity and Community Structure

温度和降水模式的变化正在影响全球生态系统的结构和功能。迄今为止，大多数研究都集中在单个物种对环境变化的响应上，但在长时间窗口内，关于整个群落响应的方向和幅度的证据仍然大部分未知。本研究将结合古生态学和现代生态学，研究沙漠系统的主要环境驱动因素降水变化对节肢动物群落的长期动态影响。这项研究将集中在智利阿塔卡马沙漠中保存在化石和当代啮齿动物丘（筑巢地点的碎片堆）中的动植物遗骸。干旱环境中的啮齿动物丘保存了近5万年来土壤节肢动物群落和环境条件的详细信息。古生态学和现代生态学的结合将拓宽我们对过去和现在生物多样性形成机制的理解。生物多样性变化的过去和当代机制将被用来预测未来降水变化对干旱区土壤群落的影响。此外，该项目将为本科生和研究生以及博士后提供许多研究和培训机会。美国本科生也将有机会参加在智利的实地沙漠生态学课程。本研究项目将利用一个独特的和未充分利用的古生物档案，提供有关节肢动物土壤群落对变化的环境条件的抵抗力和恢复力的见解。通过将啮齿动物丘的古和现代生态数据与同位素地球化学相结合，该项目将验证以下假设：(i)跨越时空尺度解开土壤节肢动物多样性格局；（ii）社区对降水变化的响应机制；(3)古生态记录偏差的大小和方向。后者是理解过去、现在和未来社区环境关系的关键先决条件。整合时间尺度内和跨时间尺度（当代、历史和古）的数据，并利用这些数据预测生态群落的变化，需要制定明确的协议和指标。因此，该项目还旨在创建一个工具箱，用于在中间层中进行生态分析，以减轻目前中间层数据的一些限制（例如，时间不连续和混合，埋藏）。这个工具箱将适用于广泛的地理问题，并可转移到其他中期重建中，例如索诺兰沙漠中的重建。了解生物多样性模式和生态群落沿环境梯度的长期变化，可以预测复杂系统对时空尺度气候变化的响应。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。

Changing temperature and precipitation patterns are affecting the structure and function of ecological systems worldwide. Most studies to date have focused on individual species responses to environmental change, but evidence for the direction and magnitude of whole-community responses, over long temporal windows, remain mostly unknown. This research will integrate paleoecology and modern ecology to study the long-term dynamics of arthropod communities across changes in precipitation, the major environmental driver structuring desert systems. This research will focus on plant and animal remains preserved in fossil and contemporary rodent middens (debris piles at nest sites) in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Rodent middens in arid environments preserve detailed information on soil arthropod communities and environmental conditions over the last 50,000 years. The integration of paleoecology and modern ecology will broaden our understanding of mechanisms shaping past and present biodiversity. Past and contemporary mechanisms underlying biodiversity change will then be used to predict the effects of future precipitation change on arid land soil communities. In addition, the project will provide many research and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a postdoctoral fellow. US undergraduates will also have the opportunity to participate in a field-based Desert Ecology course in Chile.This research project will use a unique and underutilized paleobiological archive to provide insights about the resistance and resilience of arthropod soil communities to changing environmental conditions. By integrating paleo and modern ecological data from rodent middens with isotope geochemistry, this project will test hypotheses focused on: (i) disentangling soil arthropod diversity patterns across temporal and spatial scales; (ii) mechanisms underlying community-level responses to changes in precipitation; and (iii) the magnitude and direction of biases in the paleoecological record. The latter is a crucial prerequisite for understanding past, present, and future community-environment relationships. The integration of data within and across temporal scales (contemporary, historical, and paleo), and using this data to predict changes in ecological communities, requires development of clear protocols and metrics. Hence, this project also aims to create a toolbox for ecological analyses in middens that mitigates some current limitations of midden data (e.g., temporal discontinuity and mixing, taphonomy). This toolbox will be applicable to a broad range of geographical questions and transferable to other midden reconstructions, such as those in the Sonoran Desert. Understanding long-term variation in biodiversity patterns and ecological communities along environmental gradients may allow responses of complex systems to changes in climate across spatial and temporal scales to be predicted.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.