Structuring Mechanisms of Ecological Communities

已知非生物（如气候、物理环境）和生物（如捕食、竞争）过程以及随机机会（如强风暴、火灾）相互作用，其影响通过空间过程进行调解，最终决定了单个物种及其聚合产物——生态群落的分布。研究表明，各个因素在决定群落组成方面的相对重要性各不相同。此外，研究还表明，这类研究可能受到下列因素的影响：用来描述群落特征的测量方法的选择（例如，分类组成、体型、功能特征，如它们是捕食者还是需要温暖的温度）、所考虑的时空尺度以及所研究的物种类型（例如，植物、鸟类）。该研究将研究安大略省近10,000个湖泊中鱼类的生物多样性关系（通过物种分类、物种形态、物种进化亲缘性和物种功能特征来测量），并测试这些不同的测量方法是否对环境条件有相似的反应。通过对1000个湖泊多次采样的数据，我将回答查尔斯·达尔文提出的关于入侵物种和群落组成的基本问题，以评估最有可能成为成功入侵者的物种类型以及它们对接收群落的影响。我将比较安大略省和欧洲湖泊的湖泊鱼类群落，以确定环境条件是否选择了群落形态和功能特征上相似的生态结果（趋同），尽管物种在进化过程中基本不相关。我将使用湖泊温度和鱼类生长的模拟，以及实地采样来测试我们是否可以预测更有可能作为小嘴鲈鱼在其北部分布范围内的殖民点的湖泊类型，因为它是一个扩大其范围的物种，并且已知在其殖民的湖泊中具有重要影响。生态学家和进化生物学家通常有多组数据，基于相似的测量（例如不同鱼类的形态），必须相互比较。我们知道，这些比较对不寻常的观察（例如，一条鱼的一个部分的变形）非常敏感，但我们目前没有很适合的方法来最小化这种不寻常的观察的影响。我将开发和评估一些方法，这些方法将提供强大的统计方法，适用于分析具有这种挑战性的条件下的观察结果，并开发一个可供生态学和进化生物学研究人员使用的统计软件包，因为这些类型的问题在我们的领域中很常见。

Abiotic (eg, climate, physical environment) and biotic (eg, predation, competition) processes, along with random chance (eg, severe storms, fire) are known to interact and their effects to be mediated through spatial processes, ultimately determining the distribution of individual species and their aggregated products, ecological communities. Studies have shown respective factors can vary in their relative importance in determining community composition. Also, it has been shown that such studies may be influenced by choice of measure considered to characterize the community (eg, taxonomic composition, body size, functional traits such as whether they are predators or require warm temperatures), the spatial and temporal scale considered, and the type of species studied (eg, plants, birds). The proposed research will study relationships in biodiversity (measured on species taxonomy, species morphology, evolutionary relatedness of species, and species functional traits) of fishes in nearly 10,000 Ontario lakes and test whether these different measures respond similarly to environmental conditions. Using data from >1000 lakes that have been sampled multiple times, I will answer fundamental questions posed by Charles Darwin about invasive species and community composition to assess the types of species most likely to be successful invaders and what impact they have on the recipient community. I will compare lake fish communities from Ontario and European lakes to determine whether environmental conditions have selected for similar ecological outcomes (convergence) on the morphology and functional traits of communities, despite the species being largely unrelated through evolution. I will use simulations of lake temperature and fish growth, along with field sampling to test whether we can predict the types of lakes that are more likely to serve as colonization points for Smallmouth Bass along its northern distribution range, as it is a species expanding its range and known to have important effects within lakes where it colonizes. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists often have multiple sets of data, based on similar measurements (e.g. morphology of different fish species) that must be compared to one another. We know that these comparisons are very sensitive to unusual observations (e.g. a deformation on one part of one fish), yet we do not currently have methods well suited to minimize the effect of such unusual observations. I will develop and assess methods that will provide powerful statistical methods suitable to analyse observations having such challenging conditions, and develop a statistical package available to researchers in ecology and evolutionary biology, as these types of problems are common across our fields.