Towards bryophyte landscape ecology in boreal eastern Canada: bryophyte population and community dynamics at the landscape scale

苔藓植物是一种小型的殖民地植物（通常不到10厘米高），在北方森林中数量丰富，种类繁多。它们生活在森林中不同的栖息地，如枯木、树干和暴露的矿物土壤，许多物种只能生活在这些斑块状的栖息地。它们用孢子和营养结构代替种子繁殖，虽然这些结构非常小，但我们并不知道它们能从母体植物迁徙到新栖息地的距离。我们也不明白苔藓植物周围的森林类型是如何影响它们制造孢子的能力的。这意味着我们不知道通过森林管理或其他开发类型改变北方景观将如何影响苔藓植物物种的丰富度。通过这个研究项目，我建议确定允许新个体建立新殖民地的栖息地之间的最大距离，以及特定地区的森林类型和干扰如何影响苔藓植物物种的存在及其穿越景观的能力。确定这一点很重要，因为在欧洲国家，森林景观因森林管理和发展而发生了巨大变化，许多苔藓植物种类现在很罕见，但在加拿大仍然相当常见。根据这个研究项目的结果，我们可以制定指导方针，以确保我们不会过多地改变北方地区的景观，并降低苔藓植物物种继续在景观中传播的能力。

Bryophytes are small colonial plants (generally less than 10cm tall) that are abundant and very diverse in boreal forests. They live in different habitats in the forest, such as dead wood, tree trunks and exposed mineral soil, and many species can only live in these patchy habitats. Instead of seeds they reproduce with spores and vegetative structures and while these structures are very small it is not really known how far they can travel from the mother plant to colonise new habitats. We also don’t understand how the forest types surrounding the bryophytes influence their ability to make spores. This means that we don’t know how changing the boreal landscape by forest management or other development types will influence the abundance of species of bryophytes. With this research program I propose to determine the maximum distance between habitats that permits new individuals to establish new colonies, and how the types of forests and disturbances in a given area affect bryophyte species presence and their abilities to travel across the landscape. This is important to determine, as in European countries where the forest landscape has been greatly changed by forest management and development, many bryophyte species are now rare but are still fairly common in Canada. With the results of this research program we could develop guidelines to make sure that we don’t change the boreal landscape too much, and reduce bryophyte species’ ability to continue travelling across the landscape.