| 项目编号: | 1553718
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| 项目名称: | CAREER: Spatial network structure and food web stability across a productivity gradient. |
| 作者: | Kurt Anderson
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| 承担单位: | University of California-Riverside
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| 批准年: | 2016
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| 开始日期: | 2016-06-15
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| 结束日期: | 2021-05-31
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| 资助金额: | 833500
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| 资助来源: | US-NSF
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| 项目类别: | Standard Grant
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| 国家: | US
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| 语种: | 英语
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| 特色学科分类: | Biological Sciences - Environmental Biology
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| 英文关键词: | food web
; patch
; experiment
; habitat
; biodiversity
; dispersal network
; regular network
; network-wide stability
; network theory
; resource productivity
|
| 英文摘要: | Many environments that are important for wildlife and human well-being are spread unevenly across the landscape. Examples of these "patchy" environments include natural habitats like wetlands and human-managed habitats like agricultural fields. This project will test the idea that the number of different species (biodiversity) that can live in patches of habitat depends on the animals' ability to move between patches, the places where those patches occur, and the amount of food available in each patch. Understanding what determines biodiversity is important because it allows one to predict and manage especially diverse, often vulnerable, patches of habitat. Because it is practically impossible to rigorously test the determinants of biodiversity in natural areas, this project will take place in the laboratory. Researchers will create miniature, patchy worlds of very small animals that live in water to study what happens on much larger scales to animals in the real world. Experiments will focus on the relationship between the number of species, their dispersal abilities, and the amount of food available to them in small containers of water. A complicated model will be built to help analyze the data and extend the results to different animals and different types of habitat patches. The laboratory experiments will also be used in teaching and outreach activities to provide opportunities for grade-school students and teachers to learn scientific methods and ecological concepts through hands-on experiences. Both students and teachers will help design and carry out experiments, contributing directly to the scientific process.
The investigator will experimentally test whether a common feature of ecological systems -- dispersal among irregularly distributed habitats -- affects the stability of a fundamental ecological unit, the food web. Research will include experimental and theoretical components. Experiments conducted using protist microcosms will test hypotheses arising from network theory that: (1) food webs connected through randomly structured dispersal networks will show greater spatial asynchrony and network-wide stability than those connected in regular networks and (2) effects of dispersal will vary across a gradient in resource productivity, as this factor is known to alter food web stability. Experiments will be integrated with mechanistic models, extending the generality of project findings to broader contexts and advancing general food web theory. The research will also leverage the tractability of protist microcosms to provide inquiry-based curriculum content and student research projects in an undergraduate ecology course. Students from groups currently underrepresented in science will be recruited and mentored in experimental design, data collection, analysis and presentation. Outreach activities will bring public school teachers into the investigator's laboratory and translate ecological research experiences into lesson plans aligned to Next Generation Science Standards. |
| 资源类型: | 项目
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| 标识符: | http://119.78.100.158/handle/2HF3EXSE/92038
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| Appears in Collections: | 全球变化的国际研究计划
科学计划与规划
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| Recommended Citation: | |
Kurt Anderson. CAREER: Spatial network structure and food web stability across a productivity gradient.. 2016-01-01.
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