SYMP 3-4 - Integrating theory across levels of organization: from physiology to evolution

Monday, August 15, 2022

4:30 PM – 4:50 PM EDT

Location: 524A

Presenting Author(s)

PA

Priyanga Amarasekare, PhD

University of California- Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA, United States

Co-author(s)

JB

Jordi Bascompte

University of Zurich
Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
DD

Donald DeAngelis

U. S. Geological Survey, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, Florida
HI

Hidetoshi Inamine

Pennsylvania State University
CK

Colin T. Kremer

Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California, United States
SL

Simon Levin

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, United States
DP

Damie Pak

University of Michigan
MP

Mercedes Pascual, n/a

Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, United States
AS

Allison Shaw

Associate Professor
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, United States
Fernanda S. Valdovinos, PhD

Assistant Professor
University of California Davis, United States
RN

Roger Nisbet

UC Santa Barbara

Background/Question/Methods

Making quantitative connections between lower-level processes and higher-level outcomes is a central issue in ecology. An important, and hitherto largely unresolved, issue is whether those inter-connections that occur below the level of the individuals determine those that occur above the individual level. We identify three priorities for advancing theory in ecology. The first is to develop theory that incorporates processes operating at the suborganismal level (e.g., genetic, biochemical, physiological) to predict higher-level responses to environmental perturbations (e.g., phenological and range shifts due to climate warming, population and community-level effects of toxins and pollutants). The second is to develop

theory on cross-level interactions between an individual of one species and a community of others (e.g., host-microbiome interactions). The third is to develop theory, based on ideas of robustness, modularity and network motifs in suborganismal systems (e.g., transcription, metabolic and neural networks) to explain why particular network topologies confer stability at higher levels of organization such as complex ecological communities.

Results/Conclusions

We will propose novel theoretical advances on (i) integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches to modeling effects of environmental stress on organisms, (ii) predicting species’ responses to environmental perturbations by integrating information across levels of organization, from physiology to evolution, (iii) organism-community and host-microbiome interactions, and (iv) using properties of suborganismal systems (e.g., transcription, metabolic and neural networks) to predict why and how certain network topologies confer community stability and buffer the effects of environmental perturbations at community and ecosystem levels.