Freshwater metacommunities: dispersal through space and time at multiple scales

是什么决定了社区的结构和动态？这个基本的和古老的问题今天仍然非常相关，并形成了我的研究计划的基础。迄今为止，我的工作已经清楚地表明，整合当地的环境和空间扩散过程中的社区结构的调节，通过元生态概念是绝对必要的，以捕捉所有重要的过程，构建当地社区。这项研究提供了一些明确的观测证据，最近开发的metacompatibility框架工作，研究网站相互连接，通过分散的物种。然而，其他两个重要的生态决定因素，时间过程和物种性状，目前只隐含在元生态理论。探索性地将它们纳入元性框架将是确定局部、空间和时间元性动力学的根本原因的重要一步，这是我研究计划的长期目标。我将采用水文动态和平阿萨巴斯卡三角洲的枝藻群落作为一个模型系统，用于测试特定的假设。在接下来的5年里，我将重点关注：1）一个季节内短期时间元性动态的模式和原因; 2）季节之间中期时间元性动态的模式和原因; 3）个体物种特征最终如何导致这些元性动态。前两个项目是两个完整的博士项目，第三个项目是一系列的硕士和本科生研究项目。这些项目采用观察和实验方法相结合的方法，以及现代分子技术和最先进的统计分析。这些新的研究问题和结果将扩大元共生理论的机制基础，包括重要的时间过程和物种特征。此外，它将提供严格的科学依据，预测生态系统的反应，在压力和恢复，因为在和平阿萨巴斯卡三角洲的气候变化。

What determines community structure and dynamics? This basic and ages-old question is still very relevant today and forms the basis of my research program. My work to date has clearly illustrated that integrating local environmental and spatial dispersal processes in the regulation of community structure through the metacommunity concept is absolutely necessary to capture all the important processes structuring local communities. This research provided some clear observational evidence for the recently developed metacommunity frame work that studies sites interconnected to each other through dispersing species. However, two other important ecological determinants, temporal processes and species traits, are currently only implicitly included in metacommunity theory. Explicitly incorporating them in the metacommunity framework will be an important step in determining the fundamental causes for local, spatial, and temporal metacommunity dynamics, the long term objectives of my research program. I will employ cladoceran communities in the hydrologically dynamic Peace-Athabasca Delta as a model system for testing specific hypotheses. I will focus for the next 5 years on: 1) the patterns and causes of short term temporal metacommunity dynamics within a season; 2) the patterns and causes of medium temporal metacommunity dynamics between seasons; and 3) how individual species traits ultimately cause these metacommunity dynamics. The first two projects are structured as two complete PhD projects, the third project as a series of Master and Undergraduate research projects. These projects use a combination of observational and experimental approaches, together with modern molecular techniques and state-of-the-art statistical analyses. These novel research questions and results will expand the mechanistic basis of metacommunity theory by including the important temporal processes and species traits. In addition, it will provide the rigorous scientific basis for predicting ecosystem responses during stresses and recovery because of climate change in the Peace-Athabasca Delta.