Linking species form, function and adaptations to freshwater habitats: implications for global change in aquatic systems.

淡水生态系统对于维持生物多样性和提供各种生态系统服务具有全球重要性。人为的压力正在造成全球淡水永久性的变化，热带和温带地区的干旱日益严重，因此物种灭绝率和淡水生态系统退化正在增加。预测跨景观和大陆的淡水生态系统响应将是我们了解这些系统在土地使用和气候变化下如何发展的关键。功能植物地理学正在成为一个有前途的领域，发展这样的预测，生物体的形式和功能的多样性被放入一个空间明确的背景下，通过连接小规模和大规模的生物多样性模式的环境的反应。在陆地领域，功能地理学弥合了生物多样性梯度和地球化学循环之间的差距，为驱动生态系统和生物多样性变化的潜在机制提供了框架。然而，目前还不清楚这种框架在多大程度上适用于水生生物，以及对水中生命的独特适应如何塑造淡水生物的功能性生态地理学。 我的研究计划的长期目标是了解和预测淡水生态系统如何响应全球变化，通过他们的功能适应生活在水中。在接下来的5年里，我的研究计划将通过两个互补的短期目标来探索这一目标。目标1是发展水生植物形态和功能的宏观生态学概述，无论是在一个抽象的功能特征空间和全球环境梯度。目的2是加强我们的机制的理解，当物种经历了突然的个体发生变化之间的水生和陆生生活形式的性状变异的地理限制。 总之，这些目标支持的长期目标，发展一个概念性的理解，如何适应生活在水中的功能分布在景观内和跨景观。描述淡水物种的功能限制和独特性将使我们能够具体说明在制定淡水生态系统的保护优先事项和行动计划时，何时，为什么以及如何需要独特的系统具体方法。因此，如果我们要减少人类对全球淡水系统生物多样性和生态系统功能的影响，就有可能描述和量化所需的行动。

Freshwater ecosystems are of worldwide importance for maintaining biodiversity and the provision of a myriad of ecosystem services. Anthropogenic pressures are creating global shifts in freshwater permanency, increasing droughts in tropical and temperate regions and consequently species extinction rates and freshwater ecosystem degradations are increasing. Predicting freshwater ecosystem responses across landscapes and continents will be key in our ability to understand how these systems will develop under land-use and climate change. Functional biogeography is emerging as a promising field to develop such predictions, where the diversity of organismal forms and functions are put into a spatial-explicit context by linking responses of small and large-scale patterns of biodiversity to the environment. In the terrestrial realm, functional biogeography has bridged the gap between biodiversity gradients and biogeochemical cycles, providing a framework for underlying mechanisms driving ecosystem and biodiversity change. However, it is still unclear to what extent such a framework to aquatic organisms and how unique adaptations to life in water shape the functional biogeography of freshwater organisms. The long term goal of my research program is to understand and predict how freshwater ecosystems responses the global change, via their functional adaptations to life in water. Over the next 5 years, my research program will explore this goal through two complementary short-term objectives. Objective 1 is to develop a macroecology overview of aquatic plant form and function, both in an abstract functional trait space and across global environmental gradients. Objective 2 is to enhance our mechanistic understanding of the biogeographic constraints on trait variation when species undergo an abrupt ontogenetic change between an aquatic and terrestrial life form. Together, these objectives support the long-term goal of developing a conceptual understanding of how functional adaptations to life in water are distributed within and across landscapes. Describing the functional restrictions and uniqueness of freshwater species will allow us to specify when, why and how unique system specific approaches are needed when developing conservation priorities and action plans for freshwater ecosystems. Thereby, it will be possible to describe and quantify the actions needed if we are to reduce human impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in freshwater systems worldwide.