BoCP-Design: US-China: Interactions between land-use change and island biogeography as drivers of animal community assembly in the Zhoushan and Caribbean Archipelagos

University Of Texas At Arlington, Arlington TX

Investigators

Abstract

Humans modify natural habitats, such as forest and grasslands, to create agricultural fields and developed areas for people to live. This project aims to understand why such human-caused habitat modification causes extreme biodiversity loss in some places, while other places are more resilient. One idea suggests that small islands are especially at risk, because they can only evolve a small set of species that can only use a few types of resources or habitats. In contrast very large islands evolve many species, at least some of which will have less specialized requirements and may be able to prosper in human-modified environments. The researchers will test the hypothesis that biodiversity persists better in human-modified areas on bigger islands, as predicted by a "lottery model" of tolerance to human land-use. Relatedly, they will study if species' evolutionary history affects how much biodiversity remains in human-modified areas. Specifically, they will examine whether species that arrived on an island from elsewhere are more likely to tolerate human-modified environments, in comparison to species that evolved on the island in question. Understanding why some areas are more vulnerable to losing biodiversity will help prioritize places to conserve. Relatedly, knowledge of where biodiversity will be most robust to loss will help maximize use of ecosystem services that benefit people. The research will support undergraduate and graduate student training and promote scientific collaboration between US and Chinese biodiversity researchers. To understand when and where biodiversity declines will be most severe after habitat modification, the researchers will examine communities of birds, reptiles, and amphibians in both natural habitats and human-developed areas. They will do so across islands of different sizes and isolations in both the Caribbean and Zhoushan Archipelagos (China). Together this combination of species groups and locations allows the researchers to distinguish good dispersing species (birds) from poor dispersing ones (reptiles and amphibians) in island systems where dispersal is easy (in Zhoushan, because between-island distances are small) versus hard (in the Caribbean, where distances are long). The researchers will use transects and long-term audio recordings to assess species occurrence over hundreds of locations across 56 islands in the two regions. They will quantify how specialized species are by studying diet and habitat use of the organisms encountered. 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.