RAPID: Cicadas as catalysts: Quantifying the population, community, and evolutionary effects of a periodic resource pulse.

雏蝉的出现是一个独特的事件，因为数十亿只蝉在地下积累了17年的资源后出现，并将这些资源转移到土壤表面。这种资源从地下到地上的快速转移就像植物肥料一样，增加了土壤氮素的有效性。由于氮通常是植物最需要的养分，这种施肥可能会影响植物群落的组成(哪些物种存在，哪些物种最丰富)，促进入侵物种，并改变植物与昆虫、食草动物以及有益和有害微生物的相互作用。蝉身体腐烂造成的资源丰富也可能影响植物种群(植物种群是扩大还是减少)以及植物和微生物的进化方式。尽管资源脉冲是短暂的，但其中许多影响可能会在未来几年影响该地区的森林林下植被。该项目的目标是研究蝉的出现对植物群落和植物-微生物-昆虫相互作用的影响。该项目还利用富有魅力的蝉的出现，在K-12课堂上激发人们对科学的兴奋。研究人员将与一名K-12教师合作，后者将与本科生、研究生和PI一起开展动手课堂STEM活动。罕见事件对生态和进化的影响具有挑战性，因为它们的性质基本上不可预测。在这种情况下，该项目利用蝉的出现来安装实验，量化周期性资源脉冲的即时和长期影响。该项目涉及从森林中的地块中添加和移除数千只蝉的身体。本实验将用于回答进化生态学、群落生态学和种群生态学领域的问题。首先，研究人员将测量植物性状的自然选择，以调查氮如何影响植物进化，并将分离固氮根瘤菌，以验证资源增加导致合作程度较低的根瘤菌进化的理论预测。其次，研究人员将测试蝉身体处理如何影响植物-食草动物和植物-微生物的相互作用，植物群落组成，以及由此产生的资源脉冲是否会创造促进入侵物种的“入侵窗口”。最后，研究人员将对重点物种进行人口统计学研究，以测试资源脉冲如何促进种群增加(或减少)。总而言之，该项目调查了一次罕见事件如何立即改变森林林下生态和进化，同时也为调查长期影响奠定了基础。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。

The Brood X cicada emergence is a unique event as billions of cicadas emerge after accumulating resources belowground for seventeen years and transfer those resources to the soil surface. This rapid transfer of resources from belowground to aboveground acts like plant fertilizer and increases soil nitrogen availability. Because nitrogen is frequently the nutrient plants need most, this fertilization will likely affect plant community composition (which species are present and most abundant), promote invasive species, and alter plant interactions with insect herbivores and both beneficial and harmful microorganisms. The abundance of resources caused by decaying cicada carcasses also may affect plant demography (whether the plant population expands or declines) and how plants and microbes evolve. Even though the resource pulse is short-lived, many of these effects may affect forest understories in the region for years to come. The goal of this project is to study the effect of cicada emergence on plant communities and plant-microbial-insect interactions. The project also capitalizes on the charismatic cicada emergence to generate excitement about science in K-12 classrooms. The researchers will collaborate with a K-12 teacher who will work alongside undergraduate students, graduate students, and the PI to develop hands-on classroom STEM activities.The influence of rare events on ecology and evolution is challenging to study because of their largely unpredictable nature. In this case, this project capitalizes on the cicada emergence to install experiments that quantify both the immediate and long-term effects of periodical resource pulses. The project involves adding and removing thousands of cicada carcasses from plots in the forest. This experiment will be used to answer questions in the fields of evolutionary ecology, community ecology, and population ecology. First, the researchers will measure natural selection on plant traits to investigate how nitrogen affects plant evolution and will isolate nitrogen-fixing rhizobia to test theoretical predictions that increased resources cause the evolution of less cooperative rhizobia. Second, the researchers will test how cicada carcass treatments affect plant-herbivore and plant-microbe interactions, plant community composition, and whether the resulting resource pulse creates "invasion windows" that promote invasive species. Finally, the researchers will conduct demographic studies on focal species to test how the resource pulse contributes to population increases (or declines). In sum, this project investigates how a rare event alters forest understory ecology and evolution immediately, but also sets the stage for investigating long-term 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.