The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Lora A. Richards to work with Dr. Mark Westoby at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
Herbivores are limited by a combination of food resources and predators. The relative importance of these limitations is influenced by plant productivity, which can vary at several spatial scales. On a global scale, productivity generally increases towards the equator. Variation on a much more local scale occurs when large trees fall in rainforests creating light gaps. This new light exposure to the forest floor causes plants to grow quickly increasing the productivity of the gap in comparison to the forest floor without a light gap. The study is using results from local variation in productivity to determine global scale patterns. Using this technique the study is testing the hypothesis that herbivores are more sensitive to predation in the tropical rainforests, and they are more sensitive to food resources in temperate rainforests. The study is comparing changes in arthropod communities, plant quality and quantity, herbivory rates and predation rates with increasing plant productivity as the light gap size increases. Data are being collected from a total of six rainforest sites ranging from tropic to temperate along eastern Australia in collaboration with Mark Westoby at the Maquarie University in Sydney.
