NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2017: Historical Dynamics of Native Ant Communities of the Southeastern U.S.: Community Responses to Invasion by Exotic Ant Species

2017 财年 NSF 生物学博士后奖学金：美国东南部本土蚂蚁群落的历史动态：社区对外来蚂蚁物种入侵的反应

基本信息

批准号：
1710645
负责人：
Douglas Booher
金额：
$ 13.8万
依托单位：
Booher Douglas B
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Fellowship Award
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1710645&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship Biology FY

项目摘要

This is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, under the program Research Using Biological Collections. The fellow, Doug Booher, is conducting research and receiving training that utilizes biological collections in innovative ways, and is being mentored by two sponsoring scientists at two host institutions: Corrie Moreau (Field Museum of Natural History) and Andrew Suarez (University of Illinois). The fellow's research aims to describe and explain the changes in the abundance, distribution, and diversity of native species as non-native species arrived and spread. Human-caused transport of non-native plants and animals is moving species at unprecedented rates across the globe. These introduced species are the second leading cause of extinctions. Therefore, understanding how invasive species impact ecological communities over different time scales is a major question in ecological research. In Florida, approximately 25% of 239 ant species are non-native and about half these introductions happened in the last 35 years. The fellow is assessing the impact of invasive ant species, using very large and geographically extensive collections of ant communities collected in Florida over the past several decades, supplemented by older records in museum collections. In addition to pursuing these research interests, the fellow is engaging in public outreach programs for grade-school age children as well as training future scientists through integrative biology internship programs while conducting research at Field Museum and the University of Illinois.This research has two main objectives in using available museum collections: (1) to investigate the long-term fates of invasive species and the corresponding dynamics of native communities after invasion to test competing hypotheses of community assembly i.e. neutral vs. niche assembly; and (2) to evaluate the importance of seven traits hypothesized to explain the ecological success of invasive species. Traits hypothesized to confer competitive success are continuous reproduction, polygyny, supercoloniality, omnivory, habitat generality, nest opportunism, and worker polymorphism. For these objectives, the fellow will investigate community dynamics at two phylogenetic scales: at a coarse phylogenetic scale, communities of all ants, and at a finer phylogenetic scale, communities of congeneric ants. In Florida, there are five common and/or diverse ant genera with native and non-native representative species. This will allow for a phylogenetically controlled statistical comparisons of ant community dynamics where members of these communities are more likely to overlap in life history and ecological traits due to shared ancestry. Once digitized, the collections data of this research will be publicly available through Antweb.org. As one of the largest and longest time series collections of ants from a single region, these data will be invaluable to community ecologist, invasive ecologists, pest management scientist, evolutionary biologist, biodiversity scientists, climate scientists, and conservationist.

这是美国国家科学基金会生物学博士后研究奖学金，属于“利用生物收藏进行研究”计划。该研究员 Doug Booher 正在开展研究并接受以创新方式利用生物藏品的培训，并受到两个主办机构的两位赞助科学家的指导：Corrie Moreau（菲尔德自然历史博物馆）和 Andrew Suarez（伊利诺伊大学）。该研究员的研究旨在描述和解释随着非本地物种的到来和传播，本地物种的丰度、分布和多样性的变化。人为造成的非本地动植物运输正在以前所未有的速度在全球范围内转移物种。这些引入的物种是灭绝的第二大原因。因此，了解入侵物种如何在不同时间尺度影响生态群落是生态研究的一个主要问题。在佛罗里达州，239 种蚂蚁中约有 25% 是非本地物种，其中约一半是在过去 35 年引入的。该研究员正在评估入侵蚂蚁物种的影响，利用过去几十年在佛罗里达州收集的大量、地理广泛的蚂蚁群落藏品，并辅以博物馆藏品中的较旧记录。除了追求这些研究兴趣外，该研究员还在菲尔德博物馆和伊利诺伊大学进行研究，同时还参与小学年龄儿童的公共外展计划，并通过综合生物学实习计划培训未来的科学家。这项研究有两个主要内容使用现有博物馆藏品的目标：（1）调查入侵物种的长期命运以及入侵后本地群落的相应动态，以测试群落组装的竞争假设，即中性与生态位组装； (2) 评估为解释入侵物种的生态成功而假设的七个特征的重要性。假设赋予竞争成功的特征是连续繁殖、一夫多妻制、超级殖民性、杂食性、栖息地普遍性、巢穴机会主义和工蚁多态性。为了这些目标，该研究员将在两个系统发育尺度上研究群落动态：在粗略的系统发育尺度上，所有蚂蚁的群落，在更精细的系统发育尺度上，同属蚂蚁的群落。在佛罗里达州，有五种常见和/或多样化的蚂蚁属，其中包括本地和非本地代表物种。这将允许对蚂蚁群落动态进行系统发育控制的统计比较，其中由于共同的祖先，这些群落的成员更有可能在生活史和生态特征上重叠。一旦数字化，这项研究的收集数据将通过 Antweb.org 公开提供。作为单个地区最大、时间最长的蚂蚁时间序列集合之一，这些数据对于社区生态学家、入侵生态学家、害虫管理科学家、进化生物学家、生物多样性科学家、气候科学家和自然资源保护主义者来说将具有无价的价值。