INS 2-2 - Can we use ecological networks to infer ecosystem resilience across space?

Monday, August 15, 2022

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM EDT

Location: 520A

Presenting Author(s)

CB

Ceres Barros

University of British Columbia, Canada

Co-author(s)

CB

Ceres Barros

University of British Columbia, Canada
JB

João Braga

Ecofish
LP

Laura Pollock

Assistant Professor
McGill University, Quebec, Canada
TM

Tamara Münkemüller

Laboratoire d'Écologie Alpine
WT

Wilfried Thuiller

Senior Research Scientist
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LECA
38400 Saint-Martin-d'Hères, France

Less resilient ecosystems are prone to losing species and function following disturbance. This species loss is not independent – losing some species can lead to losing others, making ecological networks essential to measure when evaluating ecosystem resilience. Until recently, ecological networks provided mostly local assessments of ecosystem resilience to species loss (i.e., network robustness). As regional metawebs of species interactions become available, they can be coupled with projections of species distributions to ‘spatialize’ ecological networks, quantify their robustness to environmental change, and provide large-scale assessments of ecosystem resilience. We exemplify this with a regional trophic metaweb and climate change.