Descrizione del progetto
Come le relazioni tra piante e insetti influenzano la biodiversità forestale
I modelli di biodiversità non sono distribuiti uniformemente in tutto il mondo. Ad esempio, perché la varietà di flora e fauna presente nelle foreste pluviali tropicali supera quella delle foreste temperate? Finanziato dal Consiglio europeo della ricerca, il progetto Diversity6continents studierà le particolari reti alimentari di piante e insetti in siti di ricerca di sei continenti, coprendo tre coppie di foreste di zone tropicali e temperate. Lo studio intende distinguere se le differenze latitudinali nella diversità degli insetti dipendono dalla diversità filogenetica o funzionale delle piante, dalla specificità dell'ospite e dalla diversità o specificità dei predatori. I risultati della ricerca, insieme al coinvolgimento degli operatori locali, contribuiranno a creare una base e un incentivo per la pianificazione strategica della conservazione della biodiversità.
Obiettivo
The study will examine one of the most fundamental, yet poorly understood patterns of global biodiversity distribution: How can so many species coexist in a tropical forest? This key question of current ecology will be studied using quantitative surveys of plant-herbivore-parasitoid food webs within paired sets of tropical and temperate forests from six continents, in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Gabon, Panama, the Czech Republic, Japan, and USA, sampled using canopy cranes, truck-mounted elevated platforms and forest felling. This novel type of data will be analysed using a new rarefaction method, developed to test mechanistic explanations for biodiversity patterns along ecological gradients. It will evaluate competing hypotheses explaining latitudinal trends in insect herbivore diversity by the variation in either phylogenetic or functional diversity of plants, the host specificity of herbivores, or the diversity and specificity of their parasitoids and predators. The study will thus examine the importance of bottom-up (plants) and top-down (enemies) drivers of latitudinal trends in herbivore food webs, central to ecological theory that postulates the role of specialized herbivores as density-dependent agents of mortality involved in maintaining high tropical plant diversity. The project builds upon prior research that produced one of the largest tropical food web data sets to expand it conceptually, methodologically and geographically. It will build a globally important research facility (a canopy crane in PNG) and link researchers and infrastructure from several countries in a major effort to draw together separate lines of tropical and temperate research. Study sites in the ILTER, NEON, CTFS/SIGEO, and Canopy Crane Network will participate. The internationally recognized paraecologist program will be expanded, PhD students from both European and developing countries will be trained, and conservation of rainforests by indigenous rainforest dwellers will be leveraged.
Campo scientifico
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological morphologycomparative morphology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiodiversity conservation
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological behavioural sciencesethologybiological interactions
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomology
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantIstituzione ospitante
370 05 Ceske Budejovice
Cechia