EAGER: Effects of Leaf Diversity on Aquatic Insect Colonizer Diversity

动物的多样性往往随着群落中植物的多样性而增加。其中一个原因可能是动物选择有更多不同植物的栖息地。这些多样化的植物可以提供更多种类的营养物质或其他资源，以支持更多样化的动物群落。多样性可以通过物种的多样性、物种扮演的角色的多样性或这些物种进化历史的多样性来衡量。本项目通过控制人工池塘中死树叶的混合物，并估计选择这些池塘的昆虫的多样性，来检验这些不同类型多样性的重要性。为了研究水生昆虫的多样性，研究还将考虑物种的多样性，物种的角色（特别是饮食）和进化历史。这项研究将为水生生境周围树木的多样性如何影响水生生物多样性提供重要信息，并为与水生群落保护和恢复有关的林业管理提供指导。该项目还将指导来自代表性不足背景的本科生和高中生进行科学研究，并向公众提供有关树木和水生昆虫多样性的宣传。该项目将同时对池塘生态系统中凋落叶的物种、功能和系统发育多样性进行控制，并研究对水生昆虫殖民化的物种、功能和系统发育多样性的影响。该研究还将检验这种关系的形式，以确定资源多样性的增加是否以线性、对数线性或中间峰值的二次形式影响殖民者的多样性。这一信息将对未来研究水生昆虫多样性与特定类型凋落叶多样性相关的潜在机制具有重要指导意义。实验设计将使用大于最高物种丰富度处理的物种池，以避免混淆物种丰富度和群落组成，并进行检查，以防止混淆凋落叶种类、功能、系统发育多样性和平均叶片性状。研究人员将通过测量水生昆虫的大小和使用稳定同位素来估计营养位置和营养生态位宽度来测量水生昆虫的连续功能特征，这将比以前使用的分类特征在物种水平上提供更好的分辨率。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。

The diversity of animals often increases with the diversity of plants in a community. One reason for this might be that animals choose habitats with more diverse plants. These diverse plants may provide a higher variety of nutrients or other resources to support a more diverse animal community. Diversity can be measured by the variety of species, variety of the roles that species play, or the variety of evolutionary histories of those species. This project examines the importance of these different types of diversity by manipulating the mixtures of dead tree leaves in artificial ponds and estimating the diversity of insects choosing those ponds. To examine the diversity of aquatic insects, the research will also consider the variety of species, species roles (particularly diet), and evolutionary histories. This research will provide important information on how the diversity of trees surrounding aquatic habitats affects aquatic biodiversity, providing guidance on forestry management relating to the conservation and restoration of aquatic communities. This project will also involve mentoring undergraduate and high school students from underrepresented backgrounds to perform scientific research, as well as provide outreach on the diversity of trees and aquatic insects to the general public.The project will simultaneously manipulate species, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of leaf litter in pond mesocosms and examine effects on species, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of aquatic insect colonizers. The research will also examine the form of the relationship to determine if an increase in resource diversity affects colonizer diversity with a form that is linear, log-linear, or quadratic with an intermediate peak. This information will be important to guide future work on potential mechanisms of why aquatic insect diversity is related to particular types of leaf litter diversity. The experimental design will use a species pool larger than the highest species richness treatment to avoid confounding species richness and community composition, and checks will be performed to prevent confounding leaf litter species, functional, phylogenetic diversity, and average leaf traits. Researchers will measure continuous functional traits of aquatic insects by measuring their size and using stable isotopes to estimate trophic position and trophic niche breadth, which will provide better resolution at the species level than previously used categorical traits.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.