Species interactions and ecological function under biodiversity loss and climate variability

生物多样性丧失和气候变化下的物种相互作用和生态功能

• 批准号: 2330772
• 负责人: Jedediah Brodie
• 金额: $ 87.5万
• 依托单位: University of Montana
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-08-15 至 2028-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2330772&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Species; interactions; ecological; function; under

Forests are vital to the health of our planet, providing clean air, fresh water, and a variety of other benefits to humans. They are also home to a vast array of plant and animal life, all of which play important roles in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. Like all ecosystems, however, forests are increasingly threatened by biodiversity loss and climate change. Though these changes can disrupt the complex interactions among species that make forests function properly, we still have a limited understanding of these cascading impacts. This study takes advantage of a unique natural experiment to investigate how the loss of a key species – the bearded pig – affects the health of a tropical rain forest in Borneo. The bearded pig was once a common animal in this ecosystem, playing a vital role in seed predation, herbivory, and nutrient cycling, but was recently wiped out by an introduced disease. This project will use a combination of field observations, experiments, and modeling to understand how the loss of bearded pigs has affected the ecosystem. Research results will be disseminated to non-governmental organizations and policy-makers involved in biodiversity assessment and conservation. The project will also generate outreach materials to educate the public and K-12 students about ecological functions and how they are affected by global changes. Specifically, the research has three main objectives. First, it will assess how the loss of bearded pigs affects the survival and growth of tree seedlings. Pigs played a key role in tree regeneration by eating the seeds of many plant species. Researchers will repeat a number of exclosure experiments conducted when pigs were abundant to determine how pigs and other seed-destroying consumers like rodents, insects, and fungi affect seed fates, and whether these other groups compensate for the lost effects of pigs. This will help elucidate how extirpation of an important mammal species affects the regeneration of multiple tree species. Second, the research will determine how the loss of bearded pigs and climate change combine to affect the amount of carbon stored by the forest over time. By affecting regeneration of large trees with high wood density more than other types of trees, bearded pigs are thought to have influenced overall forest carbon storage in ways that are now changing after the species’ loss. Such ecosystem changes might become even more severe as the forest starts to experience more frequent and severe droughts. Using integral projection models parameterized with extensive observational and experimental data, researchers will examine the population trajectories of numerous tree species that vary in adult size, wood density, and other traits important for carbon storage. Finally, the research will ascertain how the loss of bearded pigs affects other animals in the forest. Pigs were an important food source for predators like clouded leopards, they competed with other herbivores like deer for food, and they potentially even affected birds and bats by competing with (and reducing the abundance of) seed-eating insects. Using occurrence and abundance data spanning the last decade, researchers will examine whether the loss of pigs is changing the abundance of these other important animals in the rain forest.This project is jointly funded by Population and Community Ecology, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and Ecosystem Sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

森林对地球的健康至关重要，为人类提供清洁的空气、淡水和各种其他好处，也是大量动植物的家园，所有这些在维持平衡方面发挥着重要作用。然而，与所有生态系统一样，森林日益受到生物多样性丧失和气候变化的威胁，尽管这些变化可能破坏使森林正常运转的物种之间的复杂相互作用，但我们对这些连锁影响的了解仍然有限。利用独特的自然实验来研究损失是如何发生的关键物种——胡须猪——影响着婆罗洲热带雨林的健康。胡须猪曾经是这个生态系统中的常见动物，在种子捕食、食草和营养循环中发挥着至关重要的作用，但最近被消灭了。该项目将结合实地观察、实验和建模来了解胡须猪的消失如何影响生态系统。研究结果将分发给参与生物多样性的非政府组织和政策制定者。评估和该项目还将制作宣传材料，向公众和 K-12 学生介绍生态功能以及它们如何受到全球变化的影响。具体而言，该研究有三个主要目标：首先，它将评估胡须猪的损失。猪通过吃许多植物物种的种子而在树木再生中发挥了关键作用，研究人员将重复在猪数量充足时进行的一系列排除实验，以确定猪和其他破坏种子的消费者的喜好。啮齿动物、昆虫、和真菌影响种子的命运，以及这些其他群体是否补偿了猪的损失。这将有助于阐明重要哺乳动物物种的灭绝如何影响多种树种的再生。其次，该研究将确定胡须猪的损失如何。随着时间的推移，气候变化共同影响森林的碳储存量，通过对木材密度高的大树的再生影响更大，胡须猪被认为以目前的方式影响了森林的整体碳储存。后改变随着森林开始经历更频繁和更严重的干旱，研究人员将使用以大量观测和实验数据为参数的整体预测模型来研究许多树种在成年期的种群变化轨迹。最后，该研究将确定胡须猪的消失如何影响森林中的其他动物，猪是云豹等掠食者的重要食物来源，它们与其他动物竞争。食草动物喜欢以鹿为食，它们甚至可能通过与食种子昆虫竞争（并减少其丰度）来影响鸟类和蝙蝠，研究人员将利用过去十年的发生率和丰度数据来研究猪的消失是否正在改变这一现象。该项目由人口和社区生态学、刺激竞争研究既定计划 (EPSCoR) 和生态系统科学联合资助。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。