Predicting the population consequences of environmental change

大多数自然种群所经历的环境正在发生变化。这不仅是全球气候变化的结果，也是其他人为活动的结果，包括狩猎、栖息地改变和外来物种的引入。这种环境变化已经被证明会影响动植物种群以及这些种群所处的生态系统。环境变化的速度继续加快，可能带来灾难性的后果。不幸的是，生物学家没有准确预测环境变化将如何影响自然种群的良好记录。这是因为人口和他们所经历的环境是复杂的。我们已经确定了一种方法，这种方法可能会改进生物学家对种群如何应对环境变化的预测。我们能够建立模型的反应类型包括短期的生态反应和长期的进化反应。我们的方法依赖于一个强大的，最近开发的建模框架，可以应用于生物学家经常收集的数据类型。我们将运用这种方法来建立一个详细的模型，对黄石狼群进行充分的研究。对该模型的分析将使我们能够预测黄石狼种群如何应对各种环境变化情景。我们还将为广泛的动物数据集构建模型的简化版本，以确定动物种群可能对环境变化做出反应的更一般的模式。我们的工作有可能大大提高我们对环境变化如何在短期和长期内影响自然种群的理解。

The environment that most natural populations experience is changing. Not only as a result of global climate change, but also as a consequence of other anthropogenic activities including hunting, habitat modification and the introduction of alien species. Such environmental change has already been demonstrated to impact animal and plant populations and the ecosystems in which these populations are embedded. The speed of environmental change continues to accelerate with potentially catastrophic consequences. Unfortunately biologists do not have a good track record of accurately predicting how environmental change will impact natural populations. This is because populations and the environment they experience are complex. We have identified an approach that is likely to improve upon the predictions that biologists are able to make about how populations will respond to environment change. The types of response we are able to model include both short-term ecological ones and longer-term evolutionary responses. Our approach relies on a powerful, recently developed modelling framework that can be applied to the types of data that biologists often collect. We will apply the approach to construct a detailed model to a well-studied population of Yellowstone wolves. Analysis of this model will allow us to predict how the Yellowstone wolf population may respond to various environmental change scenarios. We will also construct simplified versions of the model for a wide range of animal data sets to identify more general patterns in ways that animal populations are likely to respond to environmental change. Our work has the potential to substantially improve our understanding of how environmental change is likely to impact natural populations in both the short and long term.