How individual behavioral variation during predator-prey interactions determines invasion success

在我们全球化的世界里，入侵物种是一个日益严重的问题。尽管它们可能带来可怕的后果，但我们预测和限制未来入侵事件影响的能力仍然令人惊讶地有限。每一次入侵都以本土物种和入侵物种的独特组合为特征。因此，物种之间的相互作用，特别是捕食者和猎物之间的相互作用，是理解入侵行为的核心。现在有大量不断增长的研究表明，即使在同一物种中，个体在行为等重要功能特征上也可能有所不同。在预测物种关系的传统生态学理论中，这种一致的个体行为差异或行为类型通常被忽视，它在未来的工作中的明确考虑将极大地提高我们对物种相互作用的理解，并通过这一点，未来入侵的成功。在这里，我提出了一个综合项目，旨在测试土著社区内的行为类型，特别是本地捕食者，如何影响新猎物物种的潜在入侵。我将开发一个发达的简化水生食物网络，以欧洲鲈鱼为顶级捕食者，两个端足类物种，一个本土物种和一个入侵物种，作为中间捕食者，落叶和较小的无脊椎动物作为基本资源。利用受控的实验室实验，我将阐明支撑个体与本土和入侵的端足类相互作用的行为机制。然后，复制的池塘中栖动物将使我能够测试这些行为机制在更自然的环境下是如何发挥作用的。最后，利用这些数据，我将开发一个食物网模型，以了解本土捕食者如何影响入侵过程，该模型最终将被用来预测任何已知捕食者和猎物行为的系统中未来的入侵。通过将入侵生物学和一致的个体行为差异这两个主题结合起来，我们不仅将提高我们对支配物种相互作用过程的基本理解，而且重要的是增强我们预测和缓解未来入侵事件的能力。

Invasive species are an increasing problem in our globalized world. Despite their potential dire consequences our ability to predict and limit the impact of future invasion events is still surprisingly limited. Each invasion is characterized by a unique combination of native and invading species. Therefore species interactions, especially predator-prey interactions are at the heart of understanding invasions. There is a large and growing body of work now showing that even within the same species individuals may differ from each other in important functional traits such as behaviour. This sort of consistent individual variation in behaviour, or behavioural types, was typically ignored in traditional ecological theory predicting species relationships and its explicit consideration in future work stands to dramatically improve our understanding of how species interact with each other, and through this, the success of future invasions. Here I propose an integrative project designed to test how behavioural types within native communities, especially native predators, influence a potential invasion by a novel prey species. I will exploit a well-developed simplified aquatic food web with European perch as the top predator, two amphipod species, one native and one invasive, as intermediate predators and leaf litter and smaller invertebrates as basal resources. Using controlled laboratory experiments I will elucidate the behavioural mechanisms underpinning the individual perchs interactions with the native and invasive amphipods. Then replicated pond mesocosms will allow me to test how these behavioural mechanisms play out under more natural settings. Finally, using this data, I will develop a food-web model to understand how native predators influence the invasion process which will ultimately be used to predict future invasions in any system where behaviour of the predators and prey is known. By uniting these two topics, invasion biology and consistent individual differences in behaviour, we stand to not only improve our fundamental understanding of the processes governing species interactions, but importantly enhance our ability to predict and mitigate future invasion events.