Predicting Population Dynamic Responses To Life Cycle Perturbations

生态学家的传统角色是解释生物的多样性和丰富性。然而，新的挑战和风险，如气候变化，转基因，入侵物种和生物多样性的丧失，意味着生态学家必须能够预测未来生物系统会发生什么。具有复杂生命周期的生物体需要特殊的矩阵数学，以研究其种群规模如何随时间变化。然而，生态学家传统上使用的数学方法很难提供未来人口变化的精确预测。一种新型的矩阵数学，称为鲁棒控制，能够将有关个体生命周期的所有信息与整个种群的涌现特性（如增长率和稳定性）联系起来。但是我们需要这种新的数学吗？该项目将测试传统技术和新技术在实验室中预测扰动真实的种群的影响的能力。使用淡水甲壳纲动物Daphnia，有可能通过选择性地筛选出不同大小的个体来改变生命周期，然后预测和分析这种变化对人口增长率的影响。该项目还将使用强有力的控制技术来分析过去在生态学期刊上发表的所有种群矩阵。

The traditional role of an ecologist is to explain the diversity and abundance of organisms. However, novel challenges and risks such as climate change, genetic modification, invasive species and the loss of biodiversity, mean that ecologists must be able to PREDICT what will happen to biological systems in the future. Organisms with complicated life cycles require special matrix mathematics in order to study how their populations change in size through time. However, the mathematics traditionally used by ecologists struggles to provide precise predictions of future population change. A new style of matrix mathematics, called Robust Control, is able to link all the information about individual life cycles to emergent properties of the whole population like growth rate and stability. But do we need this new maths? This project will test the ability of traditional and new techniques to predict the effects of perturbing real populations in the laboratory. Using freshwater Crustacea called Daphnia, it is possible to change the life cycle by selectively sieving out different sizes of individuals, then predicting and analysing the effect of this change on the growth rate of the population. The project will also use robust control techniques to analyse all the population matrices that have been published in ecological journals in the past.