Factors which influence trophic metacommunities across landscape gradients

生境变化和生物多样性丧失威胁着地球上的每一个生态系统和自然过程。虽然相当重视测量生物多样性，但较少关注准确和快速地测量物种群落如何相互作用（例如寄生虫和宿主，动物和植物）以及景观中离散但相互作用的群落结构。因此，量化和减轻栖息地改变的影响，并确定物种的风险或适应环境变化是保护生物学的最重要的挑战之一。 我的目标是建立物种之间的相互作用（例如宿主-寄生虫关系）和环境如何在多个营养级（植物-动物-寄生虫-微生物生命）中塑造群落结构。我的目标是利用这些数据来确定使物种适应环境变化的关键特征，并突出那些风险最大的物种，以便我们能够更好地优先考虑保护工作，并准确地模拟生态系统的变化。我建议测量植物，蝙蝠，它们的寄生虫和微生物如何相互作用，并在支离破碎的新热带森林环境。这个社区提供了重要的种子传播功能，并负责大部分的自然再造林活动和关键物种的植物运动，这对恢复这一栖息地至关重要。因此，了解影响这些社区的持久性的因素是至关重要的恢复生态学。 我们将使用最新的DNA技术来确定：1）特定的栖息地特征（例如森林的大小和复杂性）或单个物种的特征（例如果实的硬度和蝙蝠的翅膀和头骨形态）是否对维持这些栖息地中的物种并从而促进种子传播最重要。2)栖息地因素如何塑造多营养群落和宿主-寄生虫相互作用对群落内部和群落之间结构的相互影响。3)什么样的环境条件和物种特征允许一个通常食用水果和传播种子的个体改变行为，以利用昆虫作为食物，或者允许一些食虫个体在压力下专门捕食一部分可用的猎物。 我们的研究测量了从个体到景观的多个尺度上的生物多样性和物种相互作用的变化，代表了一种真正新颖和全面的方法来研究复杂的多营养级群落。这将为识别使物种具有弹性或处于不断变化的环境条件下的风险的特征奠定基础，并为学生提供如何应用最新遗传技术研究尖端模型系统的令人兴奋的培训机会。

Habitat change and biodiversity loss threaten every ecosystem and natural process on earth. While considerable emphasis has been placed on measuring biodiversity, less focus has been placed on accurately and rapidly measuring how communities of species interact (e.g. parasites and hosts, animals and plants) and the structure of discrete but interacting communities across landscapes. As a consequence, quantifying and mitigating the effects of habitat alteration and identifying species at risk or resilient to environmental change is one of the foremost challenges in conservation biology. My objective is to establish how interactions among species (e.g. host-parasite relationships) and the environment shape community structure across multiple trophic levels (plants-animals-parasites-microbial life). My goal is to use these data to identify key traits which make species resilient to environmental changes and highlight those at most risk so that we can better prioritize conservation efforts and accurately model ecosystem changes. I propose to measure how plants, bats, their parasites and microbes interact with each other and the environment in fragmented Neotropical forest. This community provides vital seed dispersal functions and is responsible for much of the natural reforestation activity and movement of keystone species of plant critical to the restoration of this habitat. As such, understanding the factors which influence the persistence of these communities is essential to restoration ecology. We will use the latest in DNA technologies to determine: 1) Whether specific habitat characteristics (e.g. size and complexity of the forest) or individual species' traits (e.g. hardness of fruit and wing and skull morphology of bats) are most important in maintaining species within these habitats and thus promoting seed dispersal. 2) How habitat factors shape multi-trophic communities and the reciprocal influences of host-parasite interactions on the structure within and between communities across fragments. 3) Which environmental conditions and species' traits permit an individual who normally consumes fruit and disperses seeds to change behaviour to exploit insects as food or permits some insectivorous individuals to specialize on a subset of the available prey when under stress. Our research measures changes in biodiversity and species' interactions across multiple scales from individuals to landscapes and represents a truly novel and comprehensive approach to study complex multi-trophic level communities. This will lay the foundation for identifying traits which make a species resilient or at risk from changing environmental conditions and provide exciting training opportunities for students in how to apply the latest in genetic techniques to study cutting edge model systems.