BoCP Design: US-China-Sao Paulo: Functional Biodiversity in Streams on a Changing Planet in Tropical, Subtropical, and Temperate Climates

人类通过将自然土地覆盖物转化为人类用途，在全球范围内改变了维持生物多样性的基本过程。淡水生态系统受到全球土地利用变化的严重影响，近年来水生昆虫急剧减少。该项目将把三大洲温带、亚热带和热带地区生物多样性的三个方面联系起来，全面了解人类土地利用如何影响水生生物，特别是石蛾，这是一种高度多样化和广泛分布的水生昆虫。确定水生态系统健康的广泛模式，以应对土地利用的变化是保护生态学的一个主要目标，但几十年来，研究一直在努力实现这一目标，主要有两个原因，本研究解决。首先，大多数生物多样性研究只考虑了物种的数量（“分类多样性”）。分类学多样性是不完整的，因为它没有提供以下信息：（a）生物体在其环境中发挥的实际作用（“功能多样性”），或（B）物种之间共有的进化历史如何使它们对土地利用变化作出类似的反应（“系统发育多样性”）。确定广泛适用模式的第二个障碍是，大多数实地研究仅在一个区域进行，因此得出的结论仅限于该区域。该项目将有助于收集和鉴定三大洲的石蛾物种，提供国际培训和联网机会，并在巴西和中国举办水生昆虫鉴定讲习班。该项目还将在巴西和中国开展长期的污染监测项目，并将培训一个由20多名本科生和研究生以及博士后研究人员组成的多元化团队。该项目小组将在河流中的幼虫和成年石蛾样本跨越土地利用变化的梯度，从河流的流域包含大部分自然土地覆盖，到那些已在很大程度上转化为农业和/或城市化。这项工作将同时在世界上三个主要的生物群落中进行：美国东南部的温带蓝岭生态区，中国东南部的亚热带钱塘江，以及巴西南部的热带Paranapanema河流域。该项目包括克莱姆森大学（CU，美国）、保利斯塔大学（UNESP，巴西）和南京农业大学（NJAU，中国）的研究人员之间不断发展的合作，研究人员将在各自的国家开展实地工作。此外，CU的研究人员将比较现代动物群与1969年和1980年代从同一溪流中取样的动物群，并将前往中国和巴西教授水生昆虫鉴定课程，并运送标本进行DNA测序。NJAU的研究人员将进行尖端的遗传分析，以计算系统发育多样性和识别幼虫，UNESP的合作者将提供社区分析和空间统计方面的专业知识。该项目将1）建立一个跨大陆的，多维的石蛾多样性数据库; 2）量化三大洲不同生态区的石蛾对人类土地利用变化的多维反应; 3）量化不同时间区域内石蛾群落的均匀性。该项目将提供新的推论和信息，以帮助识别威胁和减缓快速变化的地球上水生生物多样性的丧失。该奖项反映了NSF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。

Humans have globally altered the fundamental processes maintaining biodiversity by converting natural land cover for human uses. Freshwater ecosystems have been disproportionally impacted by global land use change, with aquatic insects experiencing sharp declines in recent years. This project will link the three dimensions of biodiversity across temperate, subtropical, and tropical regions on three continents to provide comprehensive understanding of how human land use affects aquatic life, in particular caddisflies, a highly diverse and widespread group of aquatic insects. Identifying broad patterns of aquatic ecosystem health in response to land use change is a major goal of conservation ecology, but research has struggled for decades with this goal for two main reasons, which this study address. First, most biodiversity research has considered only the number of species (“taxonomic diversity”). Taxonomic diversity is incomplete because it does not provide information about (a) the actual roles the organisms play in their environment (“functional diversity”), or (b) how shared evolutionary history among species may cause them to respond similarly to land use change (“phylogenetic diversity”). The second roadblock for identifying broadly applicable patterns is that most field studies are conducted only in a single region, limiting resulting conclusions to that region. This project will contribute to the collections and identification of caddisfly species across three continents, provide international training and networking opportunities, and deliver aquatic insect identification workshops in both Brazil and China. It will also launch long-term pollution-monitoring programs in Brazil and China and will train a diverse group of over 20 undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers.This project will focus on caddisflies—a highly diverse, widespread, and imperiled group of aquatic insects. The project team will sample larval and adult caddisflies in streams across gradients of land use change—from streams whose watersheds contain mostly natural land cover, to those that have been largely converted to agriculture and/or urbanization. Work will occur simultaneously in three of the world’s major biomes: the temperate Blue Ridge ecoregion of the southeastern United States, the subtropical Qiantang River of southeastern China, and the tropical Paranapanema River basin of southern Brazil. This project consists of a developing collaboration between researchers at Clemson University (CU, United States), Universidade Estudal Paulista (UNESP, Brazil), and Nanjing Agricultural University (NJAU, China) in which researchers will conduct field work in their respective nations. In addition, CU researchers will compare modern fauna with fauna sampled from the same streams in 1969 and the 1980s and will travel to China and Brazil to teach aquatic insect identification courses and to transport specimens for DNA sequencing. Researchers at NJAU will conduct cutting-edge genetic analyses to enable calculation of phylogenetic diversity and identification of larvae, and collaborators at UNESP will provide expertise in community analysis and spatial statistics. This project will 1) build a trans-continental, multidimensional database of caddisfly diversity; 2) quantify multidimensional caddisfly responses to human land use change in different ecoregions on three continents; and 3) quantify homogenization of caddisfly assemblages within regions through time. This project will provide new inferences and information to help identify threats and slow aquatic biodiversity loss on a rapidly changing planet.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.