Biodiversity and consumer-resource interactions in fractal landscapes

生态学的一个核心问题是规模和环境异质性如何影响种群、营养相互作用和生物多样性。要解决这个问题，部分需要了解物种对其资源（食物）进行采样的规模，以及这如何影响消费者的行为（最小斑块大小要求或放弃密度）或群落中物种的集合（生物多样性）。异质性在资源斑块的分布可以描述的分形几何和规模与消费者的身体大小以及觅食行为和斑块占用，因为生物体采样他们的环境在一个感性的粮食，涉及到他们的觅食效率。生物感知和利用资源的尺度也有助于解释群落中物种的共存模式，因为它们可能不直接竞争同一资源。一些中立的生物多样性理论，包括岛屿地理学（IBG），忽略了这些基于特征的群落聚集解释，以及与碎片干扰的相互作用。当干扰是正相关的片段（补丁）的大小，局部灭绝率可能会增加导致在IBG理论的悖论，因为在这些条件下的生物多样性可能是负相关的片段（岛）的大小。很少有人知道这种悖论有多普遍，不同的分类群如何响应相对于生活史特征（身体大小，寿命等）。以及区域集合生境和集合种群或源-汇动态是否可以通过“拯救效应”补偿更高的灭绝率。我的长期研究目标是了解与物种和生态系统的分布，动态和相互作用有关的过程，并以此为生物多样性保护提供信息。具体而言，我感兴趣的是空间和时间的尺度和异质性如何影响种群，个体行为，植物-动物（营养）相互作用和物种组合（生物多样性）。我建议通过研究以下两个互补的研究问题来解决这个研究目标：1。关键资源（水牛莓）的空间和时间异质性如何影响依赖该资源的消费者（灰熊）？2.干扰（火灾）如何与破碎（规模）相互作用，影响生物多样性格局？关于这两个问题的研究将作为一系列相关的研究项目进行，从而培养2名博士，3名硕士，许多本科生（约10名）和1名博士后研究员。这些项目将提供实验设计、实地研究（分类学、取样、安全和后勤等）、使用新的和新兴的研究工具（即无人机[UAV]用于高分辨率遥感和3D建模），分析（建模和统计）和假设检验。这项工作还将增加有关异质性和规模如何影响消费者-资源相互作用和生物多样性的知识。这两个主题有现实世界的应用程序，以管理受威胁的物种和生物多样性在加拿大，包括管理当地受威胁的高姿态的物种（灰熊）和生物多样性保护西部北方森林，这是越来越分散的资源开发和快速的环境变化的威胁。了解和减轻这些影响是必要的，以支持可持续的资源管理和加拿大的环境声誉。

A central question in ecology is how scale and environmental heterogeneity affect populations, trophic interactions and biodiversity. Answering this question partly requires knowing the scale at which species sample their resources (food) and how this affects the behaviour of consumers (minimum patch size requirements or giving up density) or the assemblage of species in a community (biodiversity). Heterogeneity in the distribution of resource patches can be described by fractal geometry and scales with body size of consumers as well as foraging behaviour and patch occupancy since organisms sample their environment at a perceptual grain that relates to their foraging efficiency. Scales at which organisms perceive and use a resource also helps explain patterns of coexistence of species in a community since they may not directly compete for the same resource.A number of neutral theories of biodiversity, including island biogeography (IBG), ignore these trait-based explanations of community assembly, as well as interactions with disturbance in fragments. When disturbances are positively related to fragment (patch) size, local extinction rates can increase resulting in a paradox in IBG theory since biodiversity under these conditions may be inversely related to fragment (island) size. Little is known about how common this paradox is, how different taxa respond relative to life history traits (body size, longevity, etc.) and whether regional metacommunity and metapopulation or source-sink dynamics can compensate for higher extinction rates via a ‘rescue effect’. My long-term research objective is to understand processes relating to the distribution, dynamics and interactions of species and ecosystems and to use this to inform biodiversity conservation. Specifically, I am interested in how scale and heterogeneity in space and time affect populations, behaviours of individuals, plant-animal (trophic) interactions and species assemblages (biodiversity). I propose to address this research objective by examining the following two complimentary research questions: 1. How does the spatial and temporal heterogeneity in a key resource (buffaloberry) affect a consumer dependent on that resource (grizzly bears)? 2. How do disturbances (fires) interact with fragmentation (scale) to affect biodiversity patterns?Research on these two questions will be carried out as a series of related research projects resulting in the training of 2 PhD, 3 MSc, numerous undergraduate students (~10), and 1 post-doctoral fellow. These projects will provide training opportunities in experimental design, field research (taxonomy, sampling, safety and logistics, etc.), use of novel and emerging research tools (i.e. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [UAVs] for high resolution remote sensing and 3D modeling), analysis (modeling and statistics) and hypothesis testing. This work will also add knowledge about how heterogeneity and scale affects consumer-resource interactions and biodiversity. Both themes have real-world applications to the management of threatened species and biodiversity in Canada, including management of a locally threatened high profile species (grizzly bears) and biodiversity conservation in the western boreal forest which is being increasingly fragmented by resource development and threatened by rapid environmental change. Understanding and mitigating these effects are needed to support sustainable resource management and Canada’s environmental reputation.