RUI: The Herbivory Uncertainty Principle - How Experimenter Visitation and Measurement Affect Herbivory and Plant Growth

RUI：食草不确定性原理 - 实验者的访问和测量如何影响食草和植物生长

• 批准号: 0128098
• 负责人: Richard Niesenbaum
• 金额: $ 7.5万
• 依托单位: Muhlenberg College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-03-01 至 2004-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0128098&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RUI; Herbivory; Uncertainty; Principle; How

The Herbivory Uncertainty Principle - How Experimenter Visitation and Measurement Affect Herbivory and Plant GrowthPI: Richard A. Niesenbaum, Muhlenberg CollegeCO-PI: James F Cahill, University of AlbertaCO-PI: Christine M. Ingersoll, Muhlenberg CollegeIn 1927,Werner Heisenberg proposed that there are fundamental limitations to the study of subatomic particles, as the act of measuring them can affect their behavior. Our prior work confirms that such uncertainty also occurs in ecological studies, where visiting plants to measure rates of herbivory actually changes those rates and significantly impacts the plant-insect interactions being studied. The implications of such "visitation effects" are enormous, and the proposed work will permit us to more substantially test whether visitation and measurement of plants alters rates of herbivory and plant growth, and will increase our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for these effects. We will examine how the presence of neighboring plants and local light environment influence the occurrence of "visitation effects", and how visitation and touch influence plant chemistry and insect foraging in the plant, Apocynum cannabinum. Results from the proposed research will challenge the long-standing assumption that field researchers are "benign observers", as the essential act of visiting plants during an experiment could alter the performance of those plants. A significant visitation effect may motivate us to re-think the way that we measure and test hypotheses about herbivory, plant growth and productivity, and other plant-animal interactions. This work is essential to understanding possible strategies to mitigate any potential observer effect in future studies, and will provide information about the basic ecology of plant-animal interactions in natural plant communities. An additional major goal is to advance undergraduate education by giving students primary roles in a significant ecological research project.

草食性不确定性原则 - 实验者的探视和测量如何影响食草动物和植物生长：Richard A. Niesenbaum，Muhlenberg Collegeco-PI：艾伯托科大学詹姆斯·F·卡希尔（James f Cahill），艾伯塔科大学：克里斯汀·M·英格索尔（Christine M. Ingersoll）粒子，因为测量它们的行为会影响其行为。 我们先前的工作证实，这种不确定性也发生在生态学研究中，在该研究中，来访的植物测量草食速率实际上会改变这些速率，并显着影响正在研究的植物 - 研究相互作用。这种“探访效应”的含义是巨大的，拟议的工作将使我们能够更基本地测试植物的探视和测量是否改变了食草和植物生长的速度，并将增加我们对负责这些影响机制的理解。 我们将研究邻近植物和当地光环境的存在如何影响“探访效应”的发生，以及探视和触摸如何影响植物中的植物化学和昆虫觅食。 拟议的研究的结果将挑战以下长期假设，即现场研究人员是“良性观察者”，因为在实验过程中访问植物的基本行为可能会改变这些植物的性能。探视效应的重大效果可能促使我们重新考虑我们测量和检验有关草食性，植物生长和生产力以及其他植物动物相互作用的假设的方式。这项工作对于理解减轻未来研究中任何潜在观察者效应的可能策略至关重要，并将提供有关自然植物社区植物 - 动物相互作用的基本生态的信息。 另一个主要目标是通过在重要的生态研究项目中为学生提供主要角色来提高本科教育。