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Response diversity: elucidating the long sought-after mechanisms underpinning ecosystem stability

Research Project

Project/Area Number 22K21332
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up

Allocation TypeMulti-year Fund
Review Section 1101:Environmental analyses and evaluation, environmental conservation measure and related fields
Research InstitutionOkinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University

Principal Investigator

ROSS Samuel  沖縄科学技術大学院大学, 統合群集生態学ユニット, ポストドクトラルスカラー (60961795)

Project Period (FY) 2022-08-31 – 2025-03-31
Project Status Granted (Fiscal Year 2023)
Budget Amount *help
¥2,860,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥660,000)
Fiscal Year 2023: ¥1,430,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥330,000)
Fiscal Year 2022: ¥1,430,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥330,000)
Keywordsecology / stability / response diversity / resilience / duckweed
Outline of Research at the Start

I will conduct 3 experiments on floating plants. 1: a simple test asking does response diversity produce less variable biomass. 2: an extension to different dimensions of stability (resistance, resilience etc.). 3: an extension to spatially-linked communities where dispersal/competition are possible

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

We conducted an experiment in Okinawa, using 75 100L buckets of water with floating aquatic plants. We used 4 species of plants in different combinations, and exposed them to Nitrate (to simulate agricultural runoff). Each week we measured water chemistry and took photographs of the plant communities, which reproduced clonally. We are developing a machine learning algorithm to automatically classify our plant species from photos. When finished, we will have data on plant growth and community composition changes, which we can use to understand how different species respond to Nitrogen, measure response diversity, and finally to relate response diversity to resilience of the communities. I also published a literature review about the topic of response diversity, part-supported by this grant

Current Status of Research Progress
Current Status of Research Progress

3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.

Reason

Turning photographs of the plants into useable ecological data has proven more difficult than anticipated. Instead of using an existing machine learning classifier to automatically identify our different plant species from photographs, we must develop our own tool to do this. We are currently working with a deep learning algorithm which is proving promising, but still requires several validation steps before we can use the data.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

The next step is to continue validation of our deep learning algorithm to identify plants and measure changes in abundance and composition in each mesocosm (100L bucket). To do this, I am currently manually labelling thousands of image segments with species identity to aid the automated identification pipeline. I anticipate several stages of retraining based on additional manual labelling.

Then, when I have data on species abundances, I will measure growth rates of different species under different nitrogen conditions, and when species are in mixture, I can measure the diversity of their growth responses. I will finally use the diversity of these responses to predict resilience (measured here as the inverse of the temporal variability of total biomass output from the combined community).

Report

(2 results)
  • 2023 Research-status Report
  • 2022 Research-status Report
  • Research Products

    (4 results)

All 2023 Other

All Journal Article (1 results) (of which Int'l Joint Research: 1 results,  Peer Reviewed: 1 results,  Open Access: 1 results) Presentation (2 results) (of which Invited: 1 results) Remarks (1 results)

  • [Journal Article] Limited theoretical and empirical evidence that response diversity determines the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change2023

    • Author(s)
      Ross Samuel R. P.‐J.、Sasaki Takehiro
    • Journal Title

      Ecological Research

      Volume: 39 Issue: 2 Pages: 115-130

    • DOI

      10.1111/1440-1703.12434

    • Related Report
      2023 Research-status Report
    • Peer Reviewed / Open Access / Int'l Joint Research
  • [Presentation] 地球環境変動下における生態系の安定性の規則性と原動力の解明に用いる統合的手法2023

    • Author(s)
      Samuel Ross
    • Organizer
      Ecological Society of Japan Annual Meeting (ESJ70)
    • Related Report
      2022 Research-status Report
    • Invited
  • [Presentation] Response diversity: concepts, methods, and applications2023

    • Author(s)
      Samuel Ross, Owen Petchey, Response Diversity Network
    • Organizer
      Ecological Society of Japan Annual Meeting (ESJ70)
    • Related Report
      2022 Research-status Report
  • [Remarks] Response diversity network

    • URL

      https://responsediversitynetwork.github.io/RDN-website/

    • Related Report
      2023 Research-status Report

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Published: 2022-09-01   Modified: 2024-12-25  

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