Food webs at the landscape level: are we missing the wood for the trees?

许多保护组织都有保护植物和动物的倡议，这些倡议在景观规模上运作。例如，目前有110个生物景观倡议（野生动物信托基金），40个未来景观（RSPB）， 8个综合生物多样性交付区（自然英格兰），以及自然改善区（Defra）。食物网是研究动植物群落非常有用的工具，十多年来，它们已经从对群落的简单描述发展成为可以预测环境变化结果的工具，例如全球变暖或物种丧失。尽管在景观保护方面有很大的进展，但食物网研究几乎总是在单一栖息地的小块土地上（例如100平方米）进行，例如调查农田里的害虫及其天敌，或调查草地上的传粉者及其花蜜植物。我们的目标是通过在景观（定义为不同栖息地的马赛克）的尺度上工作，在我们研究食物网的方式上发起一次重大变革。这一建议将使我们第一次了解食物网如何在现实世界的景观中相互作用，以及不同的栖息地（如林地、石南地和盐沼）如何影响景观食物网的结构，以及生态系统服务（如害虫控制和授粉）的提供。我们的试点数据表明，栖息地的马赛克可能比单个栖息地更能适应环境破坏。同样，我们预测，如果混合栖息地得到保护，生态系统服务的提供会更好。这里有相当大的机会实现双赢——更好地保护野生动物，更好地提供授粉和虫害防治，后者对粮食安全至关重要。目标1：在实际的保护生物学中，时间就是金钱，更有效（即更便宜！）的网络更有可能被保护生物学家使用。我们将测试基于减少采样的食物网是否仍然可以用于识别功能上最重要的物种（即那些支持大多数其他物种的物种）。目的2：我们将测试由多种生境组成的景观是否比由较少生境组成的景观更能适应物种的丧失。目标3：在栖息地之间移动的物种在实际保护中很少被考虑，但它们可能对生态系统的恢复能力至关重要，因为它们有效地将各种栖息地“粘合”在一起。我们将开发新的数学工具来计算不同栖息地在景观中的分离程度，反过来，它们的粘合程度。目标4：如果自然保护区毗邻农田，前者有可能通过流动传粉媒介和寄生蜂为后者提供生态系统服务。我们将测试随着邻近自然栖息地数量的增加，草莓种植斑块的授粉和害虫控制是否会得到改善。目标5：我们将在科学期刊上发表我们的研究结果，并通过以下方式将其传达给更广泛的受众：a)为90名自然保护区管理人员举办三次讲习班；b)与蜜蜂守护者基金会合作，将英格兰的五个城镇变成蜜蜂守护者；C)委托最后一年级的学生为从业者写报告；D)经营博客；E)向有影响力的决策者传达调查结果。研究小组具备进行研究的技巧和经验，可大大改善景观保育计划。在Memmott的领导下，这个团队由生态学家和计算机科学家、博物馆分类学家和保护生态学家组成。后者在多个景观保护项目中都有长期的利益和影响，从支持信中可以看出，我们的项目将为从业者提供循证景观保护所需的信息。

Many conservation organisations have initiatives for protecting plants and animals which operate at the landscape scale. For example there are currently 110 Living Landscape Initiatives (Wildlife Trusts), 40 Futurescapes (RSPB), and 8 Integrated Biodiversity Delivery Areas (Natural England), plus the Nature Improvement Areas (Defra). Food webs are very useful tool for studying communities of plants and animals and over a decade they have developed from simple descriptions of communities, to tools that can predict the results of environmental changes, such as global warming or species loss. Despite the strong move to landscape-level conservation though, food web studies are almost invariably conducted in small plots (e.g. 100 m2) in single habitats, to investigate, for example, pests and their natural enemies in a crop field, or pollinators and their nectar plants in a meadow. Our aim here is to initiate a major change in the way we study food webs by working at the scale of the landscape (defined as a mosaic of different habitats). This proposal will allow us for the first time to understand how food webs interact in real world landscapes and how the various habitats (e.g. woodlands vs heathland vs salt marsh) affect the structure of landscape food webs, and delivery of ecosystem services such as pest control and pollination. Our pilot data suggest that a mosaic of habitats is likely to be more resilient in to environmental damage than individual habitats. Similarly we predict better delivery of ecosystem services if a mixture of habitats are conserved. There is considerable opportunity for win : win scenarios here - better conservation of wildlife and better provision of pollination and pest control, the latter being critical for food security. There are five objectives in our proposal:Objective 1: Time is money in practical conservation biology, and networks which are more efficient to construct (i.e. cheaper!) are more likely to be used by conservation biologists. We will test whether food webs based on reduced sampling can still be used to identify the functionally most important species (i.e. those that support the most other species).Objective 2: We will test whether landscapes composed of multiple habitats are more resilient to species loss than landscapes composed of fewer habitats. Objective 3: Species that move between habitats are rarely considered in practical conservation, but could be critical for ecosystem resilience as they effectively "glue" the various habitats together. We will develop new mathematical tools to calculate how separate the various habitats are in a landscape, and conversely, how well they are glued together.Objective 4: If nature reserves are adjacent to farmland, there is potential for the former to provide ecosystem services to the latter via mobile pollinators and parasitoids. We will test whether pollination and pest control improve in patches of strawberry plants as the number of adjacent natural habitats increases. Objective 5: We will publish our findings in scientific journals and convey them to a wider audience, by: a) running three workshops for 90 nature reserve managers; b) working with the Bee Guardian Foundation to turn five towns in England into Bee Guardians; c) commissioning final year students to write reports for practitioners; d) running a blog; e) communicating findings to influential policy-makers. The research team has the skills and experience to conduct research which will improve landscape conservation projects significantly. Led by Memmott, the team consists of ecologists and computer scientists, museum taxonomists and conservation ecologists. The latter all have long-term interests and influence in multiple landscape conservation projects and as can be seen from the letters of support, our project will provide the information that practitioners need for evidence-based landscape conservation.