Organized Oral Session
Lydia Beaudrot, PhD
Assistant Professor
Rice University
Houston, Texas, United States
Chia Hsieh
PhD student
Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Biosciences, Rice University
Houston, Texas, United States
Lydia Beaudrot, PhD
Assistant Professor
Rice University
Houston, Texas, United States
Understanding the mechanisms that govern the assembly and maintenance of communities is a central question in ecology. Food web structure plays a critical role in the maintenance of diversity by promoting stability associated with ecosystem functioning. Ecologists have long recognized the importance of environmental and anthropogenic conditions as drivers of the abundance and distributions of individuals, populations and communities, yet how trophic interactions and resulting food web networks vary in response to variation in environmental and anthropogenic gradients remains largely unknown. As the biosphere changes more rapidly now than any time in human history, changes in climate and land use can alter fundamental relationships between consumers and their resources thereby altering food web structure and dynamics, which may further degrade the interactions governing ecosystem functions that sustain human wellbeing.Identifying the fundamental drivers of trophic interactions over space and time has never been more critical.
This proposed organized oral session includes both modelling and empirical trophic studies over large spatial scales in terrestrial and marine environments. Traditionally, most of our understanding of trophic interactions within food web networks has been derived from single-site studies or microcosm experiments, which inhibits generalizations across scales and hampers predictions of how global change will impact trophic networks and ecosystem functioning. Examining trophic interactions across multiple sites contributes to the understanding of fundamental issues in community ecology regarding the processes that structure community assembly and disassembly, including the critical role of the human social context. Presentations will focus on a diversity of taxa, review gaps in data availability and methodological limitations, and identify frontiers in empirical and modelling approaches that can overcome previous constraints on expanding food web research to broader spatial and temporal scales. A shift in our understanding of the large-scale drivers of trophic interactions and ecosystem stability is gonna come.
Presenting Author: Alex Moore – University of British Columbia
Co-author: Oswald J. Schmitz, PhD – Yale School of the Environment
Presenting Author: Laura Pollock – McGill University
Co-author: Dominique Caron – McGill University
Presenting Author: Amy L. Freestone, Ph.D. University of California, Davis 2005 – Temple Ambler Field Station & Department of Biology
Presenting Author: Timothée Poisot, PhD – Université de Montréal
Presenting Author: Daniel B. Stouffer – University of Canterbury
Co-author: Daniel B. Stouffer – University of Canterbury
Co-author: Hao Ran Lai – University of Canterbury (NZ)
Presenting Author: Ulrich Brose – German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Co-author: Emilio Berti – iDiv Germany
Co-author: Remo Ryser – German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Co-author: Myriam R. Hirt – iDiv