Species redundancy in response to multiple disturbances

该项目旨在阐明发生干扰的背景如何影响食物网联系，以及这些联系如何与生态系统功能中的反应相对应。迫切需要检验环境管理中的普遍假设，即高度生物多样性使生态系统对干扰具有弹性。仅仅观察干扰后生物多样性变化的研究不能确定连接高度多样性和生态系统功能的生态过程，这使得在具有不同生物多样性的生态系统中操纵相同干扰的实验变得至关重要。该项目将利用实地实验，操纵在低和高生物多样性地区复制的溪流中的干扰，并跨越长期背景压力的梯度，来展示生物多样性如何维持功能的生态系统，以及在生态系统崩溃之前可能失去多少多样性。

This project aims to elucidate how the context within which disturbances occur affects food web linkages and how these map to responses in ecosystem function. There is a critical need to test the common assumption in environmental management that high biodiversity makes ecosystems resilient to disturbances. Studies that merely observe biodiversity change after disturbance cannot identify ecological processes connecting high diversity and ecosystem function, making experiments that manipulate identical disturbances in ecosystems with different biodiversity essential. This project will use field experiments that manipulate disturbances in streams replicated in low and high biodiversity regions and across gradients of chronic background stress to show how biodiversity sustains functional ecosystems, and how much diversity can be lost before ecosystems collapse.