Multiscale and muti-system perspectives of freshwater zooplankton structure and functionality

淡水生态系统是加拿大景观的主要特征。然而，它们现在正面临着人为土地利用、工业和居住活动以及气候变化的重要干扰。由于浮游生物是水生食物网的基础，因此它们值得纳入生态学研究，以更好地维持生态系统的功能和服务。我们对淡水浮游生物多样性分布模式和功能特征的环境控制认识仍然有限。浮游动物是一个理想的模型系统，用于研究环境特征如何影响物种和性状的分布模式，并使用跨尺度和系统的综合框架。本研究的目标是提供不同生态系统中淡水浮游动物结构和功能的多尺度空间格局。利用景观指标和浮游动物分布格局的多尺度数据，建立浮游动物物种特征与环境特征之间功能联系的预测模型。

Freshwater ecosytems are a dominant feature of the Canadian landscape. However, they are now facing important disturbances by anthropogenic land use, industrial and residential activities, and climate change. As plankton form the foundation of aquatic food webs, they are worth including in ecological research to better maintain ecosystem function and services. Our knowledge of the environmental control of distribution patterns in freshwater plankton diversity and functional traits is still limited. Zooplankton is an ideal model system to investigate how environmental features influence distribution patterns in species and traits using an integrative framework across multiple scales and systems. The goals of my proposed research is to provide a multiscale perspective of spatial patterns in freshwater zooplankton structure and function in different ecosystems. We aim to build predictive models of functional linkages between zooplankton species-traits and environment features using landscape metrics and multiscale data on distribution patterns of zooplankton.