Ecosystem function and pollination across a major ecotone: boreal forest, tree-line & tundra

授粉是一项至关重要的生态系统服务，现在在世界上许多地方都被认为处于危险之中。传粉生态学对基础植物学和动物学的理解做出了贡献，对相互作用、共同进化、竞争、特征位移、传粉者营养和植物繁殖的最佳过程、群体遗传学、自然、林业和农业的可持续生态系统生产力，以及最近对生态系统结构和功能的复杂领域做出了贡献。在北方（北极和北方）的授粉研究很少。此外，对跨过渡带的比较研究也很少得到重视。拟议的研究是为了比较研究跨越北方森林和北极苔原之间的界面，在复杂的栖息地马赛克跨越哈德逊湾低地的林木线。对从Churchill到Gillam的南北样带以及瓦普斯克国家公园南北和东西样带的研究将为加拿大北部植物的授粉生物学及其与昆虫动物群的授粉相互作用提供急需的新信息。该项目建议采用生态系统方法对传粉者-植物、植物-植物和传粉者-传粉者相互作用的复杂性进行比较研究，以记录生态联系网，解决生物多样性的重要性，并考虑生态系统功能和结构驱动因素的相对重要性(例如气候和土壤的严酷程度（温度、永久冻土）；植被（森林和冻土带，干湿都有）；冰期以来的年龄；海拔高度;和火)。该地区在植物区系和动物区系方面比较出名，但目前正在经历快速的气候变化。测试简单的相关假设和复杂的模型将有助于解释生态系统的复杂性、结构、功能和完整性如何相互关联，并在该地区和生态生物地理学中共同进化。

Pollination is a crucial ecosystem service that is now recognized as in jeopardy in many places world-wide. Pollination ecology has contributed to understandings of basic botany and zoology, as well as to mutualisms, co-evolution, competition, character displacement, optimal processes in pollinator nutrition and plant reproduction, population genetics, sustainable ecosystem productivity in nature, forestry and agriculture, and recently to the complex field of ecosystem structure and function. Pollination studies in the north (Arctic & Boreal) are few. Also, little attention has been given to comparative studies across ecotones. The proposed research is for comparative studies that span the interface between the boreal forest and Arctic tundra in the complex mosaics of habitats across the tree line of the Hudson Bay lowlands. Studies on the North-South transect from Churchill to Gillam, and both North-South and East-West in Wapusk National Park will produce much needed new information on the pollination biology of Canada's northern flora and its pollination interactions with its insect fauna. The project proposes to take an ecosystemic approach to examining comparatively the complexity of pollinator-plant, plant-plant, and pollinator-pollinator interactions so as to document ecological connectance webs, address the importance of biodiversity, and consider the relative importance of the drivers of ecosystem function and structure (e.g. climatic and edaphic harshness (temperature, permafrost); vegetation (forest and tundra, both wet and dry); age since glaciation; altitude; and fire). The region is comparatively well-known floristically and faunistically, but is now undergoing rapid climate change. Testing simple correlative hypotheses and complex models will help explain how ecosystem complexity, stucture, function, and integrity are inter-related and have co-evolved in the region and for eco-biogeography generally.