Biodiversity impacts of managed and unmanaged landscapes in the Anthropocene

生物多样性是地球上生命的基础。它对生态系统的功能至关重要，因为生态系统为我们提供了产品和服务，没有这些，我们就无法生存和维持我们的社会。据信，人类系统在人类世的大部分陆地生物圈中创造了植物物种丰富度（所谓的人为生物多样性）的净增加，主要是通过促进外来物种的入侵。此外，外来物种的增加往往与本地物种的减少有关，而且通常超过本地物种的减少。总之，这些物种得失的耦合过程可以被认为是人类生态演替的新的全球生物过程，导致在非管理和管理景观中广泛出现新的生态系统。在当今全球化的世界中，外来入侵物种（IAS）由于可能对其原生范围以外的生物地理区域的生态系统造成不良的生态和经济影响而引起了人们的广泛关注。在接下来的五年里，我计划评估外来植物对土壤微生物多样性和原生和非原生景观植物多样性的影响。该研究项目将利用热带、温带和北方植物物种（及其相关的共生微生物）作为模式生物，在管理和非管理景观中操纵生物多样性（种间和种内遗传变异、入侵、渗入、适应度降低和感知冗余）的背景下，更好地理解生态系统功能和环境可持续性。目标是：i)评估这些植物在其原生和非原生栖息地的共生状况；ii)解释生境适应共生（HAS）和共生调节（SM）在植物群落生态学和进化中的作用；Iii)研究外来植物对土壤微生物和植物群落的影响；Iv)评估形态-分子变异，以识别赋予物种“入侵性”的特征；v)最终，开发空间明确的基于个体的模拟模型和统计景观生态基因组学方法。这些研究的结果将用于提供必要的科学可靠的背景信息，以便就生物多样性保护以及管理和非管理景观的生态认证作出明智的决定。这些结果也将有助于理解导致表型变异和适应的功能和进化机制，以及系统发育限制相似性假说。该项目与克什米尔大学（印度）、塔那那利佛大学（马达加斯加）和维萨罗沙联邦大学（巴西米纳斯吉拉斯州）合作，将在这个迅速发展的研究领域培训拉瓦尔大学的几名研究生。因此，该项目符合NSERC和大学的研究和培训任务。

Biodiversity is the foundation of life on Earth. It is crucial for the functioning of ecosystems, which provide us with products, and services without which we couldn’t live and sustain our societies. It is believed that human systems have created a net increase in plant species richness (the so-called anthropogenic biodiversity) across most of the terrestrial biosphere in the Anthropocene, mostly by facilitating exotic species invasions. Moreover, alien (exotic) species increases tend to be associated with native losses and usually exceed them. Together these coupled processes of species gain and loss may be thought of as new global biotic process of anthropogenic ecological succession, leading to the widespread emergence of novel ecosystems across unmanaged and managed landscapes. In the contemporary globalized world, invasive alien species (IAS) have obviously attracted much attention because of the undesirable ecological and economic effects that they may impose upon ecosystems in biogeographic regions, which are not part of their native ranges. For the next five years, I plan to evaluate the effects of alien plants on soil microbial diversity and plant diversity in native and non-native landscapes. This research program will provide a better understanding of ecosystem function and environmental sustainability, in the context of manipulating biodiversity in managed and unmanaged landscapes (inter-and intra-specific genetic variation, invasiveness, introgression, reduced fitness and perceived redundancy), using tropical, temperate and boreal plant species (and their associated microsymbionts), as model organisms. The objectives are: i) to assess the symbiotic status of these plants in their native and non-native habitats; ii) to explain the role of habitat-adapted symbiosis (HAS) and symbiotic modulation (SM) in the ecology and evolution of plant communities; iii) to examine the impact of exotic plants on soil microbial and plant communities; iv) to assess morpho-molecular variation for the identification of traits that confer "invasiveness" upon species; and v) ultimately, to develop spatially explicit individual-based simulation models and statistical landscape ecogenomic methods. Results from these studies will be directed at providing the necessary scientifically sound background information for making informed decisions regarding biodiversity conservation, and ecocertification of managed and unmanaged landscapes. These results will also help understand the functional and evolutionary mechanisms that lead to phenotypic variation and adaptation as well as the phylogenetic limiting similarity hypothesis. In collaboration with the University of Kashmir (India), the University of Antananarivo (Madagascar), and the Federal University of Viçosa (Minas Gerais, Brazil), the project will involve the training of several graduate students at Université Laval in this rapidly developing research area. Therefore, the project is consistent with the research and training mandates of both NSERC and the University.