Dimensions US-São Paulo: Animal biases in fruit selection and seed dispersal as drivers of biotic filters in the assembly of successional forests and their carbon capture potentia

热带森林通过对水循环的影响以及清除和储存大气碳的巨大能力，在调节地球气候方面发挥着重要作用。由于热带森林作为生命维持系统在全球的卓越地位以及它们面临的广泛威胁，了解热带森林如何再生、储存碳和维持高生物多样性水平是当务之急。该项目将促进对动植物互惠关系的理解，这些互惠关系涉及吃水果和散布种子的动物，影响树木的组成、多样性、生长速度和土壤微生物群落，从而影响森林生长和大气碳储存潜力。该项目将推进在恢复的林区促进降低成本和最大限度地保护生物多样性的实用原则。该项目促进了巴西和美国科学家之间的国际合作和交流，并为初级教师、博士后和所有级别的学生提供指导。具体来说，该项目将培养至少10名研究生和40名本科生，并为不同背景的学生开发一门野外生物学课程。社区外展活动包括让农村初中生和高中生参与课堂和实地考察现场的科学学习活动。该项目围绕三个目标，将生物多样性的系统发生、遗传和功能方面联系起来，结合植物-果食性互惠共生(FSD)对早期演替热带森林群落组合模式的作用。通过一个良好复制的实验设计，战略性地将功能植物特性和系统发育关系作为固定效果合并，该项目测试了FSD过程和群落组装系统发育之间的功能关系。然后，该项目研究了FSD过程与先锋植物的功能系统发育特征的相互作用如何影响随后的殖民物种的遗传多样性，进而研究遗传多样性的模式如何导致植物生存、生长和群落组装的差异。该项目最终探讨了FSD过程的生物过滤相互作用以及演替群落的功能和系统发育特征如何影响土壤微生物群落及其控制的营养库和碳转化过程，或受其影响。该项目通过探索不同规模的生物组织的机制和结果来促进基础知识的发展，这些生物组织很少在一个单一的实验框架中集中在一起：从营养相互作用和扩散过程，到土壤微生物及其生物地球化学循环效应。该奖项反映了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。

Tropical forests play a major role in regulating the earth’s climate through their effects on water cycles and their large capacity to remove and store atmospheric carbon. Because of their global preeminence as life-supporting systems and the widespread threats they face, understanding how tropical forests regenerate, store carbon, and maintain high biodiversity levels is urgent. The project will advance the understanding of the roles that animal-plant mutualisms, involving animals that eat fruit and disperse seeds, affect the tree composition, diversity, growth rates, and soil-microbe communities that influence forest growth and atmospheric carbon storage potential. The project will advance the practical principles that promote cost reduction and maximization of biodiversity conservation in restored forested areas. The project fosters international collaboration and cross-fertilization between Brazilian and US scientists and the mentoring of junior faculty, postdocs, and students of all levels. Specifically project will train at least 10 graduate and 40 undergraduate students, and develop a field biology course for students of diverse backgrounds. Community outreach activities include involvement of rural school students from middle and high school in science-learning activities at the classroom and the field study site.The project builds around three aims that link phylogenetic, genetic, and functional aspects of biodiversity in the context of the role of plant-frugivore mutualisms (FSD) on community assembly patterns of early-successional tropical forests. With anwell-replicated experimental design that strategically incorporates functional plant traits and phylogenetic relationships as fixed-effects, the project test functional relationships between FSD processes and phylogeny on community assembly. The project then examines how the interaction of FSD processes with the functional-phylogenetic traits of pioneer plants affect the genetic diversity of the colonizer species that follow, and in turn, how patterns of genetic diversity lead to differences in plant survival, growth, and community assembly. The project ultimately explores how the biotic filtering interactions of FSD processes and the functional and phylogenetic traits of successional communities influence, or are influenced by, soil microbiomes and the nutrient pools and carbon transformation processes they control. The project advances basic knowledge by exploring mechanisms and outcomes across diverse scales of biological organization rarely brought together in a single experimental framework: from trophic interactions and dispersal processes, to soil microbes and their biogeochemical cycling effects.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.