ESA 91^stAnnual Meeting: Schedule by Session Type

Symposia

Integrating ecosystem services into the policy realm
Monday, August 7, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Robert Manson, Richard Pouyat

By illustrating the links between ecosystem function and human well-being, studies of ecosystem services promote a pragmatic approach to ecological science, an informed public, and the sustainable use of natural resources. Such services were a main focus of the ESA 's Visions Committee charged with “preparing an action plan that would accelerate our progress in addressing the major environmental challenges of our time and increase the contribution of ecological science in the coming decades”. Two of the main recommendations of this committee were to enhance the role of ecological knowledge in policy decisions and use ecological research proactively to promote sustainability in a human-dominated world. While the ecological research challenges regarding the study of ecosystem services are fairly clear, the question of how to best insure the information generated by such studies is utilized in policy and management decisions is not. To address this concern and generate a discussion that should be useful to the ESA in carrying out the Vision Committee's recommendations, this symposium focuses on strategies for integrating ecological knowledge on ecosystem services into the policy realm. This symposium brings together an interdisciplinary array of experts who will provide their diverse and practical insights on this topic.

Ecological effects of Gulf Coast hurricanes: short-term impacts and long-term consequences
Monday, August 7, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Colin Jackson, Gary Shaffer, Paul Keddy

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita made landfall along the Gulf Coast in 2005. While their impacts on human communities were devastating, the ecological effects of these storms were also considerable. Storm surges flooded coastal areas and strong winds felled forests. Some of these effects were immediate; others will appear in the long-term. Louisiana 's coastal wetlands are declining at alarming rates and tidal surges from hurricanes accelerate this process. The forests of south Louisiana and Mississippi are havens for wildlife and migratory birds and some may no longer be functional refuges. Lake Pontchartrain experienced initial surges of saltwater and the subsequent addition of polluted floodwaters from New Orleans . This symposium draws together ecologists from the impacted region to discuss the effects of hurricanes on Gulf Coast ecosystems. Speakers will address the impacts of hurricanes on terrestrial and aquatic systems, and on plant and animal communities. The symposium combines studies on short-term impacts, with perspectives on the long-term consequences of hurricanes in this region. The use of this information in adaptive environmental planning will also be addressed.

Integrating microbial ecology into the general science of ecology: opportunities and challenges
Monday, August 7, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Brendan Bohannan

The science of Microbial Ecology has historically developed very separate from the general science of Ecology. It has become increasingly clear that this separation has come at a cost to both disciplines. This separation has denied microbial ecologists easy access to the rich theoretical and experimental foundation that general ecologists have developed and prevented general ecologists from truly testing the universitality of ecological concepts. The integration of microbial ecology into the general science of ecology has become both a major challenge and an exciting opportunity for ecologists. This symposium will address how this integration can be encouraged. The speakers will address such questions as: Where might microbial ecology most benefit from better communication with general ecology? What aspects of microbial ecology pose the greatest challenges for integration? How might our picture of the ecological world change if we included microorganisms more fully in the general science of ecology?

Ecological and evolutionary processes in complex networks
Tuesday, August 8, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Timothy Keitt, Bill Fagan

Network theory has emerged recently as a hot topic in ecology. The impetus driving renewed interest in networks has been recent work in complexity theory applying principles and models from statistical physics to a variety of networks ranging from the Internet to social cliques. Traditional areas of network research in ecology such as food webs have begun to employ these new models with powerful results. New classes of ecological webs are also beginning to be explored. For example, recent work on plant-animal interaction webs has provided insight into structural commonalities underlying these systems. In parallel, network theory has found important new applications in landscape ecology and conservation planning where geometric networks—mathematically represented as graphs—are used to model connectivity among reserves or other landscape elements. This symposium brings together leading researchers in the application of network theory to landscapes, communities, and disease spread to address commonality and important differences among applications of network theory in ecology and evolution.

Linking ecology and environmental justice
Tuesday, August 8, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: George Middendorf, Charles Nilon, Leanne Jablonski

Of the many ways to frame ecological studies, the most prevalent is that of basic research or inquiry as an activity (i.e., science for its own sake). Another approach is research conducted either for or as the result of policy (i.e., applied science). There is a hybrid state where both basic and applied approaches are combined by extending the conceptual framework of basic ecological studies into the human domain. The result is basic ecological research framed within policy decision-making needs. This latter framework has become increasingly important in ensuring that research addresses critical issues, that there is public support for both types of research, and that information is available to the public for use in the policy process. One increasingly used framework linking ecology with critical environmental issues is environmental justice (EJ) which holds that environmental impacts should not disproportionately affect any group and that all should be included and involved in the decision-making process. By examining the distribution of environmental benefits and harms with particular focus on the role of the decision-making process, EJ provides both a focus and a use for the results of ecological studies. Thus, linking ecology and EJ provides great opportunities for the integration of ecological knowledge into the resolution of critical environmental issues. The goals of this symposium are to illustrate how ecologists can conduct science that is useful in decision making, particularly as related to EJ issues, to encourage the development of research that incorporates societal concerns and community issues in design, and to encourage the development of research that provides information useful in decision-making. In this session, leading ecologists will explore the relationship between ecology and EJ from the perspective of their research fields and examine how linking this might change the face of ecology.

The detection of catastrophic thresholds: perspectives, definitions, and methods
Tuesday, August 8, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Robert Washington-Allen, Lucinda Salo

The concept of threshold behavior of ecosystem variables and parameters in space and time has received theoretical treatment as early as C.S. Holling's (1973) landmark paper on resilience (Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:1-23). Contemporary research has renewed this focus, particularly on the use of catastrophe theory as a mathematical framework for operational use in natural resource management. The speakers in this symposium will discuss threshold concepts including catastrophe theory, self-organized criticality, operational definitions, scaling laws, and methods for detection of thresholds including time scale calculus and renormalization. For example, catastrophic regime shifts in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems will be discussed, as will the novel use of time scale calculus to model the outbreak of West Nile virus in NYC and to direct the mosquitoes spraying schedules, and a recently discovered general scaling law for landscapes. The symposium will conclude with a discussion and synthesis of talks.

Upstart perspectives on restoration icons
Tuesday, August 8, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Daniel Larkin, Joy Zedler, Donald Falk

Restoration ecology is no longer an upstart discipline in ecology but an established star, and so it is with some of the field's theoretical underpinnings. Over the past decade, many have called for greater integration of the restoration (applied practice) and ecology (fundamental theory) halves of restoration ecology. Theorists and empiricists alike have responded by working hard to bridge the gaps. This symposium will move beyond calls for integration and critically assess what has been gained by efforts already underway. We have chosen three big questions of concern to theorists and empiricists alike: How does community structure develop? How does structure influence ecological function? How does heterogeneity alter these relationships? For each question, a speaker will present a perspective on a restoration icon and be followed by others offering upstart views that either challenge or complement the icon. The question of how community structure develops has historically been explained with succession theory. This iconic theory will be joined by views from alternative state and assembly rule theory and restoration case studies. Questions regarding structure-function relationships have been at the forefront of ecology for over a decade. Here, we will examine the paradigm of a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function along with considerations of species and genetic effects and context-dependency. Another icon, the role of environmental heterogeneity in mediating structure and function, will be viewed in light of theory on threshold effects and patchiness, and attempts to mimic natural heterogeneity in restoration settings. Like the ideas presented, our speakers will include both established and rising stars and be drawn from the ranks of theorists and empiricists alike. We hope for lively exchanges that will help pull, push, and prod restoration science along on its continuing evolution.

What makes an ecological icon?
Tuesday, August 8, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Aaron Ellison, Paul Dayton

How do upstarts evolve into icons? In this symposium, we examine historical contexts and developments of representative key ideas in ecology as refracted through their "discoverers". We discuss why some ideas take off quickly, propelling their originators to iconic status, whereas others don't, but are later rediscovered and claimed anew by the rediscoverer (who becomes the icon). Speakers include historians and ecologists who draw on examples from terrestrial, aquatic, and marine systems that span the continuum from organisms and populations to communities and ecosystems. Each speaker traces the historical development of central ecological paradigms through an examination of iconic figures responsible for generating (and often promoting) the paradigms. We contrast these individuals with contemporary upstarts – some remembered, some forgotten – who contributed formatively to the development of these paradigms. We also discuss how current norms of scholarship and publication, and mechanics of citation interact in the creation of new ecological icons.

Exchange between channel and floodplain in large rivers
Tuesday, August 8, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Cliff Hupp, Jack Grubaugh

In recent decades, research on large river ecosystems has enumerated differences between these complex systems and smaller river ecosystems. Hydrologists and ecologists have developed a tremendous amount of field research and, coupled with technological advances in remote sensing, modeling, and GIS , have produced a steady stream of information on the patterns and processes of large river systems. Integrating results from such studies is not a trivial task because large rivers are: 1) unique in biological and physical characteristics; 2) unique in the quantity and quality of human alterations; and 3) generally not found in similar climate zones. Further, large rivers may have drastically different hydrologies, physical processes, and ecological processes in their upper sections compared to their lower sections. A contemporary view of the patterns and processes of large rivers is needed to identify "research horizons" for studies in the coming decade. This symposium has been developed for speakers to present our current knowledge of large rivers' structure and function, differences between large and small river systems, concepts for understanding ecosystem exchanges, and an overview of ecosystem services of large rivers.

Niche verses neutral: a look at an iconic idea in community ecology, its challenger, and the middle ground, Part I
Wednesday, August 9, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Annette Ostling, Nathan Sanders, Jeffrey Lake

Throughout the 20th century, the dominant view in ecology has been that species live together in communities only when they have different “niches”; an even slightly better competitor for a niche will drive other species to extinction. The alternative notion—that chance dominates over competitive exclusion to shape communities—has lacked an adequate quantitative formulation. In the 1970's and 80's, random “null models” were pitted against niche-based “assembly rules”, but these were criticized as not incorporating the effects of demographic stochasticity, evolutionary history, and dispersal limitation. More recently, a “neutral theory” of biodiversity has been proposed that incorporates many of these effects. At the same time, ecologists' understanding of the niche and the evolutionary processes leading to it has become more sophisticated. In this symposium and the organized oral session following it, we will take stock of what we have learned about community assembly in the past 30 years. We will explore the debate between an idea so established it has become an icon and the latest version of the upstart notion challenging it. We will focus on the middle ground, where researchers are sorting out when the different forces of community assembly dominate and discovering phenomena arising from the combined action of niches and chance.

From upstart to icon: Geographic Information Systems in plant population ecology: historical perspective and innovative approaches in presentation, analysis, and dissemination of data
Wednesday, August 9, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Summer Scobell, Carol Johnston

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe" (John Muir). The emergence of Geographic Information Systems has catalyzed a new way of doing ecological research. GIS is an integrated system of hardware and software that creates and analyzes map layers of spatially explicit data. In this way, many of the multiple dimensions of an organism's ecological niche can be integrated, visualized, and analyzed in one database. Amazingly, it was less than 15 years ago that the first user-friendly GIS software became commercially available. From that time on, ecologists have used GIS to analyze and disseminate their data in a way that is more effective and efficient than was possible with conventional maps or databases. In 1999 an NSF workshop convened to discuss the emerging field of GIS science. Their report included predictions of the capabilities of GIS in the year 2010, including scenarios of “spatially-enabled” scientists using real-time satellite data, an interactive “Digital Earth” map, and “enhanced reality” goggles that would superimpose GIS information over field sites. It seems appropriate, therefore, to pause this year and take stock of progress in GIS science since 1999 and the innovative ways ecologists have used it in their research. This symposium will cover diverse topics including the USGS Gap Analysis program, landscape genetics, analysis of GIS using structural equation modeling, communicating the spread of plant diseases to/from the public, and predicting the effects of climate change on plant populations. This symposium will bring together ecologists from diverse fields to discuss the past successes and future possibilities of GIS . Our goal is to demonstrate that this once upstart technology is now an extremely versatile icon that can be used in an almost limitless number of ways to analyze and communicate important ideas about ecology both among collaborating scientists and, perhaps more importantly, to the world.

Beyond labeling: comparing the sustainability of conventional and certified alternative farming systems
Wednesday, August 9, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Fabian Menalled, Andrew Hulting, Katie Monsen

Agriculture increasingly depends on off-farm inputs such as fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides to meet the demands of high-yielding crops. Although successful in terms of yield, this approach to farming has been criticized as environmentally, socially, and economically unsustainable. Certified alternative farming practices including organic agriculture are upstarts that challenge the conventional agriculture icon and are promoted as ways to increase or sustain farm profitably while reducing environmental and human risks. But to what extent are these alternative production systems more sustainable than conventional agriculture? How much do we know about the differences between these production methods and what research needs to be proposed to answer these questions? This symposium addresses the sustainability of conventional and alternative production practices by comparing established agroecosystems from multiple perspectives. We conclude the symposium with a panel and audience discussion on how to optimize and prioritize continued research efforts to increase the sustainability of food and fiber production.

Mucking through multi-factor experiments: design and analysis of multi-factor studies in global change research
Wednesday, August 9, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Aimee Classen

Progress has been made in the past decade to understand terrestrial ecosystem responses to climatic change using numerous single-factor and a limited number of multi-factor experiments. Model-based analyses have also been widely used to speculate on future ecosystem responses, but their predictions remain largely untested. There is an increasing awareness that multiple, and often confounded, environmental variables may dictate the structure and function of ecosystems. Therefore, in order to answer the question “What are the potential consequences of global environmental change for ecological systems?” multi-factor experiments are needed. Multi-factor experiments are complicated by design, however, and they demand a concomitant increase in the conceptual and analytical complexity of statistical analyses for their interpretation. This symposium will bring together researchers from a variety of projects, backgrounds, and expertise to discuss our collective ability to understand and interpret the results from multi-factor experiments. The symposium will conclude with an open discussion by panel members and the audience on future multi-factor experimental design and synthesis.

The urban food web: how humans alter the state and interactions of trophic dynamics
Wednesday, August 9, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Paige Warren, Chris Tripler, Chris Lepczyk, Jason Walker

Urbanization is an ecological process that is rapidly altering food web dynamics on the global stage. However, food web theories traditionally have not addressed human influences explicitly. Few ecological systems are free of anthropogenic effects. Human influence may be encountered in any of the pathways of a food web from altering resources (e.g., fertilization) to the extirpation of some consumers and predators of others (e.g., domestic cats). Nowhere is this more evident than in urban environments where humans pervasively and simultaneously alter all levels of trophic structure. In this symposium, we will ask: Are current food web theories robust enough to account for the novel impacts of anthropogenic influences? Can we develop general and predictive models of human impacts on food web dynamics? Speakers will integrate results from urban ecological experiments with new and existing theoretical models from both the social and biophysical sciences.

Plant clonal growth – ecological implications
Wednesday, August 9, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Scott Franklin, Vladimir Douhovnikoff, Paul Gagnon

The capacity for clonal growth is widespread in the plant kingdom and predominant in many ecosystems. For example, perhaps 80% of understory flora in eastern deciduous forests have the capacity to produce independent shoots genetically identical to the parent. Numerous trees and shrubs are also recognized as clonal including aspen, coast redwood, and some of North America 's most aggressive invasive species (e.g., Ailanthus ). Aspects of clonal growth include: 1) modular and decentralized organization of the plant body; 2) architectural plasticity and plant mobility; 3) resource and information sharing between plant ramets; and 4) exceptional genotype persistence and genetic representation. Despite the profound ecological and evolutionary implications, the extent of clonality remains largely understudied, particularly in woody plants. Research in the field is thus far limited in the United States and is predominantly found in the international literature. This symposium brings together established experts (icons) and younger researchers (upstarts) with two goals: 1) to review the ecological implications of clonal growth; and 2) to compare the better-studied herbaceous clonal systems (icons) with more recently studied woody clonal systems (upstarts).

Thermal physiology as a biogeographic determinant: historical and mechanistic perspectives
Thursday, August 10, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Sarah Gilman, Jonathon Stillman, Joshua Tewksbury

Temperature is considered an important determinant of species' geographic distributions; thus, geographic range shifts are frequently predicted in response to climate change related temperature shifts. Yet, surprisingly few studies have demonstrated a mechanism by which temperature controls a species' distribution. Simply put, an organism's upper and lower thermal limits can be definitively measured in a laboratory, but the relevance of these temperatures at an organism's range boundaries is less clear. This symposium aims to address limitations in our current ability to predict species' responses to temperature changes by initiating a dialogue among physiologists, ecologists, and biogeographers. Speakers from each of these fields will review the state of knowledge in their field and suggest ways for increasing the connection of information across fields to develop a more mechanistic understanding of the role of temperature in determining species distributions at both local and geographic scales.

Biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and human health
Thursday, August 10, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Alan Townsend, Osvaldo Sala

All major aspects of global environmental change have relevance for human health and, in many cases, the health issues are strongly affected by ecological processes. Examples include the controls over many infectious diseases, the role of biodiversity in providing and maintaining ecosystem services, the provision and discovery of drugs and treatments, the detoxification of soils, air and water, and even non-physical health matters related to quality of life. Ecologists therefore can play an important role in helping to understand and mitigate the human health problems that arise from environmental change. Several recent synthesis efforts, including a SCOPE Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) on biodiversity and health, have recognized the importance of ecological controls over human health in a rapidly changing world. This symposium will draw from the SCOPE-RAP and other related activities to present a broad overview of the connections between biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human health. We will highlight gaps in our understanding and stress the need for continued growth in the collaborations between ecologists and health scientists.

Large-scale studies: challenges in experimental design and analysis
Thursday, August 10, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: ShiLi Miao, Jamie Serino, Susan Carstenn

Traditional ecological studies have relied on a statistical paradigm of replicates, homogeneity, randomness, normal distributions, and controlled experiments. Increasingly, the subjects of ecological studies are complex, non-random, non-normal, not replicable, and, in general, violate most of the above conditions. Ecosystems with high temporal and/or spatial variability require large numbers of costly replicates to achieve adequate analytical power. Therefore, innovative tools are necessary to provide adequate quantitative and analytical techniques to address these large-scale, unreplicated manipulations, such as climate change and watershed eutrophication. This symposium will review the development and current status of a variety of approaches to experimental design and statistical analysis, including Bayesian, BACIPS assessments and dynamic models, and time series analysis, by highlighting their application in the Florida Everglades, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Finnish lakes, Jemez Mountains , and Indo-Pacific Marine Protected Areas.

Integrated approaches for agroecosystem management in the 21st Century
Thursday, August 10, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Patrick Bohlen, Laurie Drinkwater, Richard Lowrance

The sustainable management of agroecosystems in the 21st century will face unprecedented challenges. The human population may reach 9 billion by mid-century and the need to feed this burgeoning population, while protecting the environment, preserving the world's biodiversity, and sustaining agriculture in an increasingly urban world, will be a massive undertaking. Meeting these unprecedented challenges will require integration of information from numerous scientific fields, especially the convergence of the ecological, agricultural, and social sciences. This symposium will contribute to a new synthesis of basic principles of agroecosystem ecology and will highlight efforts to integrate the ecological, social, and economic aspects of agricultural systems. It will bring together elder icons and younger upstarts from various fields who have worked to bridge the gap between ecology and agriculture. The symposium is also a tribute to Ben Stinner, one of the pioneers of agroecosystem ecology. The majority of the presentations will focus on temperate and subtropical agroecosystems in developed countries, but the concepts presented have global relevance.

Multiple resource limitation in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
Thursday, August 10, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Adrien Finzi, Lars Hedin

The study of carbon-nitrogen interactions has dominated ecosystem science for the last several decades. Yet conceptual models suggest that the efficiency of primary production is maximized when multiple resources are simultaneously limiting. More generally, this raises the possibility that ecosystem function is simultaneously limited by multiple resources. The objective of this symposium is to bring together a diverse group of scientists working in very different systems to explore the nature and extent of multiple resource limitation to ecosystem function. We define 'ecosystem function' broadly to include the effect of multiple resources on community structure or composition, primary production, decomposition, soil development, trophic interactions, and nutrient retention. The symposium will demonstrate that a fundamental understanding of ecosystem function can only occur through the analysis of multiple element cycles.

Revisiting the "stability" icon: upstart approaches to modeling resilience
Thursday, August 10, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Donald DeAngelis, Steven Railsback, Volker Grimm, Uta Berger

Stability is one of the oldest and most important icons of ecology. Understanding stability properties is key to maintaining ecosystems and natural resources sustainably. Recent advances in our understanding of ecosystems have replaced the fuzzy concept of stability as static equilibria with the concept of resilience—the ability of ecosystems to dynamically absorb disturbances and provide services under a wide range of environmental conditions. Bottom-up simulation models (e.g., grid- and individual-based models) allow the study of how resilience emerges from lower-level interactions and how system-level properties feed back to the behavior of low-level entities. The resulting models have a high degree of realism and deliver independent, secondary predictions for validation. This symposium will demonstrate how this upstart modeling approach can be applied to the stability icon and underpin the new notion of resilience with mechanistic understanding. This integration will promote understanding of how ecosystems maintain their function.

Returning soils to restoration ecology: rethinking the trade of structure for function
Friday, August 11, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Mac Callaham, Christine Hawkes

Current strategies in restoration ecology generally focus on the restoration of vegetative structure, with the assumption that a restoration of whole-system function will follow. However, system function does not always accompany restored structure. This problem can often be traced to failure to establish essential aboveground/belowground linkages. Although restoration ecologists acknowledge the importance of soils, it is rare for soil to be considered, a priori, when restoration objectives are formulated. This situation seems unusual, as soils were a major focus of pioneering restoration ecologists who were motivated by massive degradations of soil resources during the dust-bowl era of the 1930s. Possible reasons for the tendency to overlook soils in restoration efforts include: 1) Soil is opaque and difficult to study; 2) Benchmarks for soil functions have been difficult to identify; and 3) Soil processes develop over a wide range of time-scales, including some that are too long to be practical to study given the relatively short duration of many restoration projects. This symposium will emphasize the importance of soils to restoration efforts and will help develop a framework for assessing soils in the restoration context. The objective of this symposium is to stimulate discussion between soil ecologists and restoration ecologists in hopes of moving closer to the ultimate goal of ensuring the ability of soils to sustain ecosystems and provide adequate supplies of food and fiber, while maintaining other critical functions into the foreseeable future. A panel discussion will follow.

Species invasion and species saturation: reconciling patterns of change in biodiversity
Friday, August 11, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Thomas Stohlgren, Sara Simonson, Dov Sax, David Tilman

Species invasions are fundamentally altering ecosystems around the world. “Icons,” like Charles Elton, have suggested that communities become saturated in time. “Upstarts” have suggested that species-rich communities may be even more invaded than species-poor ones. Such evidence is difficult to reconcile with accepted theory, which suggests that resource limitations and competition should maintain species richness and abundance below some theoretical maximum. It follows that, where dispersal is not severely limited, over evolutionary time scales, niches should fill such that the amount of unused resources decreases and the number of species within an area stabilizes. However, modern trade and transportation greatly enhance dispersal, reduce barriers to species movement, facilitate the migration rates of native species within countries, and exponentially increase the introduction and exchange of non-indigenous plants, animals, and diseases among continents. Initially, such invasions may increase species richness; however, the long-term results of invasions are unclear and depend on the importance of species saturation and competition in structuring communities. What if other factors (e.g., facilitation) structure communities? These issues are not just of academic interest, as we are confronted with an unprecedented volume and number of species introductions. We debate findings from paleoecology, ecological theory, empirical observations, and experimental evidence to provide insights on invasion, migration, coexistence, and community saturation at different spatial and temporal scales. We span terrestrial and aquatic systems in various habitats and countries. Our speakers may not always agree. We hope to improve our understanding of species saturation in structuring ecological systems in light of invasions and better understand many basic issues in ecology: alternate stable states, regional and global homogenization, and invasion meltdown to name a few.

The ecological consequences of genetic diversity
Friday, August 11, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Marc Johnson, Randall Hughes

Understanding the ecological and ecosystem-level consequences of biodiversity is a fundamental challenge in ecology. Decades of research and intense debate have given way to a growing consensus concerning the consequences of species diversity, as well as the mechanisms underlying the effects of diversity. Despite this advance in our knowledge, ecologists know very little about the ecological consequences of one of the most important sources of biodiversity—genetic diversity. By combining ecological and evolutionary approaches, the burgeoning field of community genetics has revealed that genotypic differences between individuals within populations can have large effects on communities and ecosystem processes. This suggests that genetic diversity can have consequences for communities of organisms similar to species diversity. Given the ubiquity of genetic variation in nature and its importance to basic and applied problems in biology, understanding the community and ecosystem consequences of genetic diversity is quickly becoming an important goal of ecological research. In this symposium, we will discuss and synthesize the recent conceptual and empirical advances in our understanding of the ecological consequences of genetic diversity. The symposium will focus on the effects of genetic diversity on individual species' demography, species interactions within and between trophic levels, and ecosystem dynamics, with the ultimate goal of determining when genetic diversity is likely to be most important. We will also examine how genetic diversity influences the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes. Talks will feature experimental field and laboratory studies, observational research, and mathematical theory to explore how genetic diversity influences the ecology of organisms from microbes to dominant forest trees in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

Organized Oral Sessions

Designing, restoring, and managing ecosystems
Monday, August 7, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Marty Matlock, W. Cully Hession

The need for competent ecosystem design, restoration, and management criteria and methods is great, as articulated by the ESA Visions Committee. This session is organized to explore the breadth and depth of ecosystem design, restoration, and management practices. Specific questions to be addressed include: 1) How much and what in ecological knowledge base is appropriate for application in design, restoration, and management of ecosystems; 2) What are the greatest challenges in applying ecological knowledge for design, restoration, and management of ecosystems; 3) What criteria can we establish now as governing principles in ecosystem design; 4) What criteria can we establish now as governing principles in ecosystem restoration; 5) What criteria can we establish now as governing principles in ecosystem management; 6) What authority/oversight role will ESA play in establishing these criteria; 7) What role should public engagement play in developing and implementing ecosystem design, restoration, and management projects/criteria; and 8) How should the public be engaged in developing and implementing ecosystem design, restoration, and management projects/criteria?

Alteration of North American forest communities by invasive invertebrates
Monday, August 7, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Lee Frelich, David Foster

Invasive invertebrates as a group are altering temperate hardwood and conifer forests of eastern North America on a massive scale. Eastern hemlock, a foundation tree species, is disappearing from Connecticut to North Carolina due to the introduced hemlock wooley adelgid, several species of ash are threatened by the emerald ash borer, European earthworms have infested several million hectares of forest and changed soil nutrient cycling and water status, and exotic selective herbivores such as gypsy moths and European slugs are altering the species composition of plant communities. This organized oral session will provide a broad survey and synthesis of invasive insects, earthworms, and slugs that collectively threaten to remove entire tree species from the forests of eastern North America, put the remaining species through the filter of selective herbivory, and re-engineer ecosystems by changing soil structure, nutrient cycling, water flow, and seedbed properties. These changes brought about by invasive invertebrates are occurring (or will shortly occur) within our most treasured parks, natural areas, and designated wilderness areas (e.g., Great Smoky Mountains National Park , Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness). This group of invaders will both illuminate ecosystem function by altering fundamental resource gradients and species composition on large scales and force us as ecologists to grasp for new conservation strategies. Case studies of impacts by several invasive invertebrates will be presented, along with paleoecological perspectives on forest response to past loss of tree species, modeling the spread of invasive insects and susceptibility of plant communities to invasion, and policy and biological strategies for managing these invasions.

Functional roles of fine roots and mycorrhizal fungi in carbon and nutrient cycling
Tuesday, August 8, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Erik Hobbie, John Hobbie

Fine roots and mycorrhizal fungi are primary pathways for nutrient uptake by plants and are important sinks for carbon acquired in photosynthesis. Quantification of carbon and nutrient cycling driven by fine roots and mycorrhizal fungi is difficult for several reasons including the fine-scale heterogeneity of soil, uncertainties in turnover rates of fine roots and fungal hyphae, and potential pitfalls in extrapolating from laboratory studies to the field. To circumvent these difficulties, several methods have been employed to estimate belowground carbon allocation: mycorrhizal allocation, root allocation, nutrient uptake, and fungal and root turnover. Promising methods include in-growth cores, carbon flux budgets, girdling or chilling trees to restrict belowground allocation, mapping mycorrhizal and nutrient heterogeneity in soil, and using the natural abundance of 14 C and 15 N. Our goal is to advance understanding of the strengths and limitations of these methods through presentations and discussion.

The modern paradigm in population ecology: stochastic, statistical, and inferential
Tuesday, August 8, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Elizabeth Holmes, Chris Jordan, Brian Dennis

In the last 10 years, the study of population and community dynamics has shifted towards stochastic models away from the deterministic models so familiar in ecology during the last century. Understanding of the properties of stochastic versions of familiar ecological models is an active area of research and, along the way, the field of theoretical ecology is shifting to new paradigms of thinking about ecological processes. The familiar concept of population state or carrying capacity as a fixed line passing through a series of observations is not particularly meaningful in a stochastic framework and is replaced by the concept of stationary probability distributions. The concept of equilibria is replaced by the concepts of inflection points in first passage probabilities and modes and antimodes in stationary distributions. At the same time, there has been a fundamental shift away from qualitative visual comparisons of model output with qualitative system behavior and towards rigorous statistical linking of stochastic ecological models and observations using modern, often numerical, statistical methods that are suited for non-linear stochastic models which include both process and non-process variability. Concepts such as likelihood surfaces, first passage distributions, conditional probability distributions, prior and posterior distributions, numerical statistical algorithms, and formal model support have joined nonlinear dynamics and stability as permanent parts of the landscape of ecological understanding. This session features some of the contemporary research on stochastic ecological dynamics and estimation that is changing the face of population ecology and that will ultimately fundamentally change the way we think and make inferences about ecological processes.

Climate change and timing in ecological communities
Tuesday, August 8, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Abraham Miller-Rushing, Richard Primack, David Inouye

Global climate change has the potential to alter and disrupt ecological communities. Among the most important and dramatic ecological changes are changes in phenology, i.e., the timing of climate-sensitive ecological events. Changes in phenological events could disrupt close ecological relationships, such as leaf-out, insect emergence, pollination, fruit dispersal, and the feeding behavior and breeding success of birds. These changes will also affect critical ecosystem functions, such as carbon sequestration, productivity, and water availability. In this session we will hear evidence of phenological changes, mostly involving plants, that are already occurring as a result of climate change. We will learn about new techniques that are available to monitor these changes, such as remote sensing and multi-continental networks of ground observations. Lastly, we will hear predictions of how time-sensitive ecological relationships will change in response to climate change. Climate change is already affecting ecological systems and will continue to do so over the coming years, providing a particularly relevant topic for this session.

Ecology and poverty alleviation: bringing ecological knowledge to the forefront of development goals
Tuesday, August 8, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Fabrice De Clerck, Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio , Jane Carter Ingram

Globally, 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 per day. This population is highly dependent on natural resources for daily survival, whether they live in rural or urban areas. Often the poorest are the most vulnerable to degradation of natural resources, loss of ecosystem services, and natural disasters. Thus, ecologists have a distinct role to play in the alleviation of global poverty. At the Montreal ESA Meeting, more than 50 ecologists gathered at a discussion session to identify specific ways in which ecology can be used in poverty alleviation. It was clear that ecologists are needed to “paint the big picture.” The tradition of elucidating complex systems and relationships and working across scales and disciplines enables ecologists to tackle the similarly complex, multi-faceted problems of poverty reduction. Much of the ecological knowledge needed to address the challenges of poverty is already known; we must focus on information needs and exchange and applying knowledge in the appropriate social and ecological contexts. The main obstacle to the use of ecology in poverty reduction is that sustainability is often treated as an afterthought in development projects. It is understandable that ecological sustainability is overlooked when primary development goals focus on such basic issues as eliminating hunger, eradicating HIV, and providing universal access to safe drinking water. However, as ecologists we must make the case that ecological sustainability is neither simply a benefit of development interventions nor an impediment to development. Rather, ecological sustainability is a means to achieving poverty alleviation goals; the foundation of a healthy society is a healthy environment. The goals of this oral session are: 1) to present examples of the application of ecological principles and knowledge to poverty reduction strategies; 2) to synthesize information from recent environment and development initiatives, assessments, and meetings; and 3) to engage in a discussion of the challenges and opportunities that arise from using ecological sustainability as means to alleviate poverty.

When does fear matter? A road map to the implications of trait-mediated effects to ecology
Wednesday, August 9, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Evan Preisser, Geoffrey Trussell, Earl Werner

Predators eat prey and prey try to avoid being eaten; this statement embodies both classical (predators affect prey populations via consumption) and more recent (predator avoidance may itself incur significant costs to prey populations) approaches to community ecology. Traditional models have emphasized consumptive or density effects to predator-prey interactions but recent work has indicated that community dynamics are strongly influenced by the effects of non-lethal interactions between predators and their prey. Although ecologists are often aware of the potential importance of prey responses to predation risk (‘trait-mediated effects'), these effects are rarely explicitly incorporated into studies because of the difficulty of disentangling the role of trait-mediated and density-mediated effects. The influence of non-lethal effects on prey growth, life history, and resource use can reinforce or oppose density-mediated effects, making the outcome of such interactions difficult to predict. This symposium synthesizes theory and empirical research to explore the factors influencing the relative importance of trait- and density-mediated effects in ecological communities. We seek to provide a ‘road map' that details when and where researchers need to account for such effects and identifies the potential mechanisms driving these effects in each case. We address how trait-mediated effects may fundamentally change our approach to issues such as the impact of invasive versus native predators, the effect of consumers on diversity-functioning relationships, and the use of trophic cascade theory for managing natural communities. Other presentations will explore the implications of trait-mediated effects to spatial ecology and theoretical developments and how these effects ‘scale up' as more species are added to a community. We conclude with a round-table discussion on gaps in our knowledge base and suggested directions for theoretical and empirical research.

 Niche verses neutral: a look at an iconic idea in community ecology, its challenger, and the middle ground, Part II
Wednesday, August 9, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Annette Ostling, Nathan Sanders, Jeffrey Lake

This session is a continuation of the symposia with the same name. Throughout the 20th century, the dominant view in ecology has been that species live together in communities only when they have different “niches”; an even slightly better competitor for a niche will drive other species to extinction. The alternative notion—that chance dominates over competitive exclusion to shape communities—has lacked an adequate quantitative formulation. In the 1970's and 80's, random “null models” were pitted against niche-based “assembly rules”, but these were criticized as not incorporating the effects of demographic stochasticity, evolutionary history, and dispersal limitation. More recently, a “neutral theory” of biodiversity has been proposed that incorporates many of these effects. At the same time, ecologists' understanding of the niche and the evolutionary processes leading to it has become more sophisticated. In this symposium and the organized oral session following it, we will take stock of what we have learned about community assembly in the past 30 years. We will explore the debate between an idea so established it has become an icon and the latest version of the upstart notion challenging it. We will focus on the middle ground, where researchers are sorting out when the different forces of community assembly dominate and discovering phenomena arising from the combined action of niches and chance.

The devil is in the detail: theory for empirical model systems
Thursday, August 10, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Ottar Bjornstad, Priyanga Amarasekare

The foundational theory of ecology, epidemiology and behavioral ecology has been taught to every undergraduate and graduate student during the last half century. The underlying models have also motivated numerous historical and recent experiments and detailed observations on particular empirical systems. Encouragingly, the classic strategic models, many of which date back to the 1920s through 1960s, offer qualitative predictions that match data. However, many of the recent strides forwards in theoretical ecology have come from very specific case studies involving clever experimentation and/or detailed field studies. This symposium will: 1) explore the utility of the foundational models in understanding the ecological dynamics of specific systems; and 2) discuss how many recent conceptual and theoretical insights have been reached by embracing the 'idiosyncrasies' of any particular system. The individual presentations detail these issues using case studies from behavior, biocontrol, epidemiology, and community ecology.

Rhizosphere functioning in carbon and nitrogen cycles
Thursday, August 10, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Wendy Silk, Gretchen North

A boundary layer of soil surrounding plant roots is the “rhizosphere,” the site of complex ecological interactions among roots, soil particles, microbes, and insects. It has long been known that a large fraction of carbon recently fixed in leaves is rapidly (on the time scale of minutes to hours) released to the rhizosphere. Release of carbon from living roots is only part of the complex carbon cycle. Myriad processes interact to produce carbon sequestration in soils and carbon flux to the atmosphere. Root death is an important source of soil carbon, as is microbial activity. Bacteria and fungi degrade the root exudates, and the associated soil respiration competes with microbial mineralization of the available carbon. Recent discoveries from a number of laboratories are revealing mechanisms of transport processes coupled with complex chemical signaling among the biotic components of the rhizosphere. Many questions need to be addressed in order to understand biogeochemical cycles in soil and the crucial role of the rhizosphere. For example, how is the rhizosphere organized spatially and temporally, and how can we characterize the effects of environmental perturbation on its structure? What are the rates of fine root production and death? How do older parts of roots affect their rhizospheres? What is the role of rhizosphere moisture in stimulating carbon and nitrogen deposition and root decomposition? What is the capacity of soil to store carbon? Thus, rhizosphere studies are of fundamental importance to ecology on spatial scales ranging from the microbial to the global. In the spirit of the “upstart and icon” theme of the Memphis meeting, we are featuring talks by graduate students as well as professors.

Bottomland hardwood forest restoration and management for wildlife
Thursday, August 10, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Randy Wilson, Daniel Twedt

Hardwood forests within river floodplains provide a myriad of ecological benefits: flood abatement, enhanced water quality, carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, and merchantable forest products. Throughout the world, and specifically within the southeastern United States , millions of hectares of forested wetlands have been converted to agriculture but financial incentives, combined with marginal profitability of farming these converted forest lands, have induced widespread restoration of bottomland forests. In the Mississippi Alluvial Valley , approx. 200,000 ha have been planted with hardwood trees with an additional 200,000 ha expected to be restored during the next 10 years. Success of restoration has varied among sites, but creating and sustaining full ecological benefits of these bottomland hardwood forests is conditioned upon appropriate restoration and management. Wildlife habitat on restored and extant forested wetlands is influenced by their landscape placement, vegetative conditions, and the temporal status of habitat manipulations (restoration or management). Recently, restoration techniques have been developed that hasten colonization by silvicolous wildlife. Additionally, silvicultural management that promotes sustainable desired forest conditions within extant forested wetlands has been embraced by the conservation community. In this session, we present an assessment of wildlife response to bottomland restoration and management.

Ecological stoichiometry of terrestrial animals
Thursday, August 10, 1:30-5 pm
Organizers: Adam Kay, Susan Bertram, John Schade

Ecological stoichiometry, the study of element balance in ecological systems, provides a framework for linking biochemical characteristics of organisms to ecosystem processes. A key nexus of integration in this framework is the balance of elements in organisms, which can reflect a consumer's physiological characteristics and life history attributes, its potential for growth limitation under nutrient scarcity, its impact on lower trophic levels, and the relative rate at which it retains ingested materials. These linkages are mechanisms by which individual-level attributes can influence population and community dynamics, food web structure, and the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients. Although the ecological relevance of element balance is firmly established in autotrophs and aquatic consumers, research on terrestrial animals has instead been based primarily on models using energetic or demographic currencies. As a result, there is still relatively little known about the degree, causes, or ecological consequences of taxonomic- and environmentally-induced differences in elemental composition among terrestrial animals. Speakers in this session represent a variety of disciplines and approaches that extend from physiological to ecological to ecosystem-level analyses. As a result, talks will highlight the importance of animal stoichiometry for processes at multiple levels of biological organization. Our goals are: 1) to illustrate how a focus on elemental composition in animals can reveal novel resource-based influences on ecological interactions; and 2) to encourage the application of ecological stoichiometry to systems and resource questions previously studied in a single-resource framework.

Phenology and ecosystem processes
Friday, August 11, 8-11:30 am
Organizer: Asko Noormets

Vegetation phenology provides an integrative measure for quantifying the season-dependent shifts in ecosystem processes. It offers the promise of reducing uncertainty in quantitative assessments of ecosystem carbon and water cycles associated with the variation in growing season length. Understanding the phenological signals that correlate with different processes would allow: 1) the use of remote sensing technology to continuously monitor these changes; and 2) the application of remotely sensed information to improve the predictive capabilities of regional biogeochemical models. This session addresses the application of phenology for interpreting variations in ecosystem function and covers the following aspects: 1) phenological changes and fluxes of carbon, water, and energy; 2) feedbacks between surface phenology and atmospheric boundary layer processes; 3) use of remote sensing for continuous monitoring of phenological change; and 4) incorporating phenological information in regional biogeochemical models.

Application of behavioral principles for ecosystem stewardship
Friday, August 11, 8-11:30 am
Organizers: Mark Brunson, Fred Provenza

Ecology has contributed greatly to the conservation and restoration of managed ecosystems such as forests and rangelands by informing the design of management strategies that reflect our current understanding of processes and conditions of the abiotic and vegetation components of ecosystems. Less attention has been given to behavioral ecology and the interactions of animals and microorganisms within ecosystems. This session addresses how new ideas about behavior can be applied to improve ecosystem stewardship. If one assumes animal behavior is fixed in the genome, then improvements in vegetation or abiotic condition generally require removal of species (especially non-native or domestic animals) whose behaviors are associated with ecosystem degradation. This session will highlight research demonstrating that animal behavior is more plastic than traditionally thought—determined by learning as well as genome—and will describe how ecosystem managers have been able to take advantage of, and even influence, behaviors of both domestic and wild animals in order to achieve desired stewardship outcomes.

Special Sessions

 Book publishing 101 -- for ecologists
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Meg Lowman, Jean Thomson Black

When, why and how should you consider publishing a book? What kind of book? For whom? And does it enhance your credibility as an ecologist? This session is aimed at graduate students and early- and mid-career ecologists who have wondered about the credentials, timeline, and effort required to publish a book. A group of experienced book publishing professionals and authors will discuss and demystify different types of books including trade, scholarly, and public science books as applicable to ecologists. This session is informal, with short presentations by five professionals on a diversity of issues that relate from start to finish the book publication process, followed by a discussion period to engage the audience in current issues relating to the book publishing trade in ecology. This session will provide insights and overviews for ecologists at a variety of career stages about the process of writing a book. It is intended to be educational in scope, providing education to the attendees about the publishing process and ultimately leading to better science literacy of the general public, as ecologists learn to embrace book publication as part of their career paths.

Using qualitative ecological models to understand students' thinking about interactions
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Marion Dresner, Claire Steiner, Andrew Moldenke

Our goal is to integrate use of qualitative ecological models into students' ecology curriculum (high school, undergraduate) for the following reasons: 1) Systems Thinking: Qualitative models can illustrate aspects of ecological thinking and knowing (e.g., feedback, inputs and outputs, important interactions like mutualism, stability); students learn from first hand experiences with field ecology; 2) Causal Relationships: Students have a hard time understanding indirect interactions and need help in moving beyond simple direct effects; 3) “Authentic Learning”: In building models during ecological research projects, students are capable of generating new knowledge about interactions within the ecosystem; 4) Constructivism: Models that students generated themselves provide them with a personalized understanding of ecosystem processes that builds upon their prior knowledge; and 5) Scientific Inquiry: Models are used to generate researchable hypotheses, which are then tested, modified based on results, etc. In addition, we think there is a lot of potential in using student-generated models for assessment. Modeling is a way for teachers and students to communicate and convey complex information in a symbolic language. Series of student-generated models can be used to help us understand what students are learning about ecological concepts and interactions. We would like to meet with interested ecologists to talk about their experiences working with student-generated models and discuss the following: Which ecological concepts should students be able to thoroughly understand and show their skills in modeling to be proficient in carrying out field research in terrestrial ecology? Which concepts (e.g., food webs, pollination, succession, stability/redundancy/resilience) are of paramount importance for citizen science?

An exploration of the role of publication-related biases in ecology
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Christopher Lortie, Lonnie Aarssen, Julia Koricheva

Progress in a scientific discipline is normally achieved through publication and dissemination of knowledge. Number of publications and their citation frequency are also widely used for academic evaluation of individual researchers, departments, and universities. Therefore, any bias in publication and dissemination of scientific content may potentially affect the development of a field in terms of what kind of information is available for synthesis, who is successfully employed, and where funding is allocated. Different attributes of the publication and dissemination process in ecology will be explored including: characteristics of the study (number of hypotheses, effect size, support for main hypothesis), attributes of the publication itself (merit, length, number and gender of authors), and attributes of the journal (reputation, impact factor, circulation). Speakers will include an NCEAS working group of ecologists studying bias, publishers, and several editors. We will discuss these issues in a panel format including questions and answers with open discussion. Please visit our website to participate in a short on-line survey on the publication and review process in ecology (www.ecobias.org).

Profiles of ecologists: results from the ESA Membership Survey
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Jason Taylor, Allison Perkins, Carol Brewer

Last summer, the Ecological Society of America requested your help to better understand the current demographics of ecologists by completing the 2005 ESA Members' Survey. This special session will take an in-depth look at the results of the membership survey and involve participants in a discussion on its implications. Some of the issues that will be explored are: 1) current employment patterns of ecologists; 2) patterns of earned doctorates by sub-discipline of ecology over the past 40 years; 3) ecological science capabilities according to problem area (e.g., how many scientists are trained to study ecological complexity of global warming); and 4) ethnic and gender diversity of ecologists in comparison with the demographic composition of the workforce.

Sense of place
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Jesse Ford, Marilou Awiakta, Robin Kimmerer

The 2006 ESA meeting convenes within the ancestral homelands of the Chickasaw Nation. The banks of the Mississippi were for uncounted generations a central gathering place for meeting and trading amongst the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee. Memphis itself is on the site of the sixth of seven ancestral towns along the Mississippi . This very special session opens our meeting with reflections from indigenous people of the region. Representatives of all three nations have been invited to provide an introduction to a sense of place through an indigenous perspective. Drawing on experiences with the region's mighty rivers and floodplains, plateaus and mountains, speakers will share their multi-faceted understanding of the region from the perspective of people shaped by landscape. Presenters incorporate traditional ecological knowledge as a foundation for addressing traditional land management practices and current ecological pressures.

Improv 101: public speaking and improv theater
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Annie Drinkard, Nadine Lymn

Nervous about your presentation? In this session participants will watch a short presentation about public speaking and organizing presentations. We will follow up this lesson with hands on activities utilizing the art of improv comedy, and have a bit of fun. This session is equal parts learning and stress relief. Handouts will be provided.

Passengers versus drivers of ecosystem change: current debate on Tamarix and riparian invasion
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Anna Sher, Juliet Stromberg

Debates are currently raging about the significance of invasive species as agents of ecological destruction. One dramatic American case study is invasion of western watersheds by Eurasian tamarisk (saltcedar); it may cover as much as 500,000 hectares, yet many now argue that this tree is more symptom than cause of ecosystem change. The degree to which this is true has important political ramifications, including how federal dollars will be spent. The goal of this session is to begin a unifying dialogue among ecologists to identify points of agreement about ecosystem processes in Tamarix invasion and information gaps that prevent us from reaching consensus. This session will be of interest to scientists and managers concerned about invasion and restoration of riparian ecosystems, as well as any ecologist who has struggled with the need to clarify the intricacies of an eco-political problem while communicating a clear message to the public.

An ecologists' community discussion of funding agency initiatives
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Nancy Grimm, Clifford Duke, Alan Covich

Join us for a discussion of research initiatives affecting the community of ecologists – we will invite federal agency program officers and ecology community leaders to update attendees about 1) ongoing and new ecology-related initiatives at federal agencies and 2) developing initiatives in the ecological research community.

Scientists engaging the media: how we can make a difference communicating science to society
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30 pm
Organizers: Alice Levine

Communicating science to society is an obligation shared by scientists and the media alike. Naturally, both must work together to achieve this common goal. This has not proved to be easy, though, partly due to negative stereotypes. Is the media only interested in sensationalism? Are scientists truly bigheaded and unable to communicate without jargon? Not so, and these typecasts can be disregarded with a little effort from both sides so that the communication divide may be bridged. If you would like to discuss these and other problems between scientists and the media and learn how they can be overcome, then come to this special session. Dynamic speakers with backgrounds in news, radio, and environmental journalism, public relations and leadership training, and academia will be present. Come hear these individuals share their experiences and address how scientists and the media can work together to create a better-informed, more scientifically literate society.

Trading places, saving spaces? Ecosystem services, ecology, and economy
Monday, August 7, 1-2:30pm
Organizers: Kheryn Klubnikin, Douglas Causey

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was the first scientific, international review of the state of the world's ecosystems, the “engines” of life on earth. The study found that about 60 percent of all ecosystems are rapidly degrading or are used unsustainably. Ecosystems are moving toward a critical point where ecosystem services are increasingly rare or nearing collapse and cannot be restored. Increasing discussion is taking place in many circles about ways to stimulate markets for environmental services that may also achieve restoration and/or conservation of important natural resources across scales, property boundaries, and geographies. Credit trading and related techniques have the potential to rearrange geographies and species distributions. The concept can only be viable if economic drivers are shaped by sound science and if the public good is kept in mind when paying the private purveyors. Issues that need to be addressed include the roles of multiple jurisdictions, multiple credits, tracking trades and conditions, sound science and biological integrity, timeframes, the rise of ecocurrency, longitudinal monitoring of conditions, and brokerages. The experts in this special session will address what is known and what is not known about the emerging issue of Ecosystem Services. Moreover, the monetization of environmental components as expressed in markets and credits may challenge long-held beliefs in the management of natural resources.

Evening Sessions

The National Ecological Observatory Network ( NEON ) will establish a continental network of intensively instrumented research sites for monitoring ecological change and will address a range of ecological questions. Plans call for training and participation of teachers, students, policy-makers, and citizens, as well as researchers. While NEON was intended to be broadly inclusive, ecologists from undergraduate institutions have been under-represented in planning discussions. This session is an opportunity for scientists from these institutions to learn about NEON and engage in an open discussion of how and if small institutions could be involved with this initiative. NEON is a multi-year, evolving project. Through active participation, ecologists from undergraduate institutions can help define NEON 's future and ensure that it serves institutions with diverse missions and resources.

Scientific assessments as upstarts in ecology: ethical considerations for ecologists
Monday, August 7, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Diane Wickland, William Michener

Recent demand for high-quality scientific information on issues relating to environmental policy and resource management is driving a proliferation of scientific assessments. Assessments typically summarize and document the state of scientific understanding on a topic, characterize uncertainties associated with this knowledge, and distill the findings into an Executive Summary for decision makers. Controversies related to undue political influences, personal biases, or characterization of uncertainty have arisen in some assessment processes. Participants may find themselves confronting new issues or more intense pressures than encountered in other scientific activities. This evening session will focus on conveying a sense of what to expect when participating in a scientific assessment, describing how an ecologist can prepare to participate, and sharing some real-life experiences of ecologists who have participated in recent assessments. Ethical issues, including the applicability of new concepts toward an ecological ethics, will be discussed. 

How to succeed in ecology: advice from professionals in the field
Monday, August 7, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Abraham Miller-Rushing, Kristine Hopfensperger

Ecology is a competitive field and the path to success is not always clear. In this session, successful ecologists from several disciplines will discuss specific strategies for success in academic and non-academic careers with current and former students. Invited guests will offer first-hand advice on career tracks at research universities, liberal arts colleges, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. After a brief introduction to the session, rotating small groups will discuss topics including: interviewing and negotiating, developing a research program, finding funding, publishing productively, networking effectively, dealing with “two-bodies” (i.e., finding positions for married/partnered pairs), and balancing work and family. The small groups will provide an intimate and informal setting to speak with professionals in the field of ecology and learn about many different strategies to achieve success. This session should appeal to all ecologists, particularly students, who we expect to motivate the discussions.

Adult environmental education—teaching not preaching
Monday, August 7, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Lyn Hoffmann , Chad Truxall

Educating adults about ecological concepts plays an important role in raising awareness about local, regional, and global environmental issues. Educated adults are informed decision makers who make environmental choices in both their personal lives and in their communities. Adults bring personal experiences, beliefs, and, quite often, skepticism to environmental science or ecology classes. We will discuss best practices to teach environmental science and ecological concepts to adults in two settings. The first is an accelerated, online, General Education class in a career-oriented degree program; the second comes from educational outreach workshops and ecotours conducted by a non-profit, marine ecology center in Florida . The session will include overviews and examples taken from teaching in both adult education venues. Topics include choosing materials, course structure, establishing outcomes, facilitation techniques, and assessment to incorporate both sound ecological science and adult learning theory. We will exchange ideas and experiences throughout the session.

Towards sustainable coexistence and ecosystem-based governance of fisheries

Monday, August 7, 8-10 pm
Organizer: Mimi Lam

The audience is invited to dialogue with the panel in a marine science, culture, and policy research and educational initiative: “Towards Ecosystem-based Governance of Sustainable Pacific Northwest Fisheries.” Salmon are eco-cultural keystone species, co-evolving for millennia with the bioregion’s people, who celebrated salmon cycles and practiced subsistence harvesting, culturally perpetuated in traditional ecological knowledge. Industrial fisheries and aquaculture have shifted this balance, depleting wild ‘icons’ and introducing farmed ‘upstarts’. Potential colonization, genetic hybridization, and disease transfers of farmed salmon competing with indigenous species exemplify market-driven, evolutionary niche construction. Salmon migrating across international boundaries and regional territories have ignited ‘turf wars’, as salmon have become ‘mobile icons’ in a widening cultural and economic divide. We extend the concept of a ‘footprint’ analysis to the marine environment as a potential integrative tool to research the impact of aboriginal and industrial fisheries and aquaculture towards the design of ecosystem-based governance of sustainable fisheries.

Trends in Long Term Ecological Research: opportunities and challenges in the synthesis of long term data
Tuesday, August 8, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Debra Peters, Christine Laney

Long term studies are increasingly recognized as critical to understanding short term patterns and dynamics and providing the context for short-term mechanistic studies. In addition, data from long term studies are needed to distinguish directional changes from natural variability. Synthesizing long term data from a variety of ecosystem types for different kinds of ecological and social science problems provides opportunities as well as challenges. In this informal session, we will discuss both the opportunities and challenges associated with this type of synthetic effort. We will also discuss an ongoing collaborative effort among federal agencies ( USFS , USDA-ARS) and the NSF-supported Long Term Ecological Research sites to synthesize long term data into a book format and a web page. Opportunities to contribute to this effort and to access the data sets will also be discussed.

How to land and keep a job at a small liberal arts college
Tuesday, August 8, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Andrew McCall, Richard Niesenbaum, Phil Camill

Are you a graduate student thinking about an academic career at a small college or university? Do you have a love for teaching and ecological research, but want to do both well? Many of us are trained to be productive researchers at primarily research institutions, but too often we leave graduate school having no idea how to get a job at a small college or university. If you would like to understand how small schools hire, how professors juggle research and teaching early in their career, or are just plain curious about the academic life at small colleges, this evening session is for you. Join us for a series of informal talks by professors at small institutions. Individual speakers will go through the processes of grad school preparation, hiring of faculty, tenure application, and getting funds for faculty/student research. We will then have a general discussion about the differences and similarities between what research institutions and small colleges are looking for in their faculty. You just may be surprised at what colleges like Carleton, Grinnell, and Claremont are looking for in potential professors.

Ecological analogies, metaphors, and anecdotes
Tuesday, August 8, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Rich Pouyat, Nadine Lymn
Cash bar and snacks will be provided.

Explaining the complexity of ecological systems to policy makers and the public is challenging for ecologists. This evening session will address the use of analogies, metaphors, and anecdotes (AMAs) that can be used to explain complex ecological principals. Prior to the Annual Meeting, we will solicit ESA members to submit their favorite AMAs, which they have used in their teaching or technology transfer activities. The Public Affairs Committee (PAC) will then select the top submissions, which will be presented at the evening session. Richard Pouyat, PAC Chair, will begin the session with an introduction and the winning submissions will be presented by the original authors. The presentations will be followed by discussion and the development of new AMAs. A final compilation of AMAs will be used to develop an encyclopedia, which can be updated by ESA on a continual basis with the ultimate goal to develop a workshop for subsequent annual meetings.

Icons/upstarts: steady-state working hypotheses, disturbance/response models and data on contrasting space-time scales

Tuesday, August 8, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Jerry Olson, Wilfred Post

Near-balance of input/output is often assumed tentatively in estimating fractional turnover rates in models (global, regional, very local) before refining simulations for localized transient recovery as: 1) measured in experiments (~local), 2) allocated over heterogeneous landscapes and climate gradients, and 3) suitably integrated for regional/global management/policy issues. This session will address problems in representing unmeasured conditions (biomass, soil pools in biogeochemistry, etc.) over heterogeneous combinations of soil and vegetation after disturbance. Cropping and grazing alter steady states (if any, recovered after natural disturbances). Pools and process rates/turnovers change differently among grid or polygon map cells. To estimate fluxes (e.g., for greenhouse gases) requires accounting for scale(s) of dynamic disequilibrium. Combining data and model analyses to infer initial conditions under non-steady states is progressing. Examples of historical reconstruction, remote sensing, model-data inverse analyses and continuous inventory will be presented. Rapid and slow humus pools, consumer dynamics, resource inventories and GIS arrays quantifying biome contrasts, formerly described or theorized by field detective work, will be addressed in a pre-meeting field conference computer lab. Co-sponsors: INTECOL website and NASA DAACS.

What editors want: do's and dont's for submitting your manuscript
Wednesday, August 9, 6:30-10 pm
Organizers: Elizabeth Harp, Abraham Miller-Rushing, Liz Ferguson

Have you ever wondered what editors look for when combing through droves of manuscript submissions? Just how do you get your manuscript to the top of the pile? In this session participants will learn what editors look for when deciding which articles get considered for publication. Editors from a variety of ecological journals will discuss how to avoid common mistakes when writing and submitting papers for publication. They will also give hints and tips about topics like copyright permissions, citations, and more. In addition, speakers will discuss current publishing trends and publishing biases. A question and answer session will follow the presentations; presentations will be kept short in order to allow plenty of time for lively discussion. More information, including a detailed speaker list, can be found at www.esa.org/students. This session is aimed at students, post-docs, and early-career ecologists, but attendance is open to all. Heavy hors d'oeuvres will be served, and beer and wine will be available for purchase.

International research in US Geological Survey
Wednesday, August 9, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Jacoby Carter, Sybil Carter

The US Geological Survey (USGS) is the science agency for the US Department of Interior and is comprised of five disciplines: Biology, Geography,Water, Geology, and Geospatial Information. The USGS carries out international activities as a complement to its domestic programs and is providing scientific and technical assistance in more than 100 countries. This evening session will go over some of the international projects in which the USGS is involved and discuss how these collaborations come about.

Ecological ethics: examining the neglected ethical context of ecological decision-making
Wednesday, August 9, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Ben Minteer, James Collins

Ecological research and decision-making can raise all sorts of complicated ethical questions, among them ecologists' responsibilities to the scientific community, public welfare, research animals, wild and captive species, and ecosystems. Answering these questions is challenging because ecologists do not have the equivalent of bioethics, an established field with a support network focused mainly on biomedicine, to help them recognize and sort through the various ethical issues surrounding their research. In this session, an interdisciplinary group of prominent environmental ethicists and ecologists will therefore begin to map the territory of a new approach in science ethics, “ecological ethics,” illustrating its practical and conceptual dimensions. Topics to be covered include the role of professional codes in shaping the ethical context of ecology, the value dimensions of ecological research and conservation practices (such as relocation and restoration), and consideration of the wider linkages between the new ecological ethics and environmental science policy.

NEON : at the starting line
Wednesday, August 9, 8-10 pm
Organizers: David Kirschtel, Jeffrey Goldman, Bruce Hayden, William Michener

NEON , the National Ecological Observatory Network, is a continental-scale research platform that will consist of a geographically distributed infrastructure, networked via state-of-the-art communications to support research and education on major national environmental challenges spanning regional to continental scales. A core design element of NEON is to provide facilities for scientists, engineers, and educators to conduct real-time ecological studies spanning all levels of biological organization across temporal and geographical scales. With the goal of helping educators and scientists understand how NEON will fit into their upcoming curricula and research programs, the workshop will serve to update the ecological community on NEON 's development as the project prepares to make the transition from design phase to deployment and operations. Following their presentations on the current status of key components of NEON , the speakers and additional panelists will participate in an extended question and answer session with workshop attendees.

Haida Gwaii, a natural laboratory...or...Is there trouble with Bambi?
Wednesday, August 9, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Jean-Louis Martin, Blangy Sylvie

This session will present a 52 minute TV documentary on the effects of abundant deer populations on plant and animal diversity in temperate forests, followed by a post-viewing discussion about “icon Bambi” and its ecological effects. The film shows how scientists from France and Canada have used the introduction of non native black-tailed deer to the islands of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia , Canada , as a natural experiment to tease apart the cascade of effects that link deer, plants, and animals. These results shed new light on the ecological consequences of high deer populations and, indirectly, on the benefits of the return of their natural predators. The film also documents the way local people perceive the changes that occur within their forests. The documentary was produced in 2004 by France5 and CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research, France).

Evaluating the success of ecological restoration programs: the challenge of integrating ecology and social science
Wednesday, August 9, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Diana Lane , Kate LeJeune, Matthew Birnbaum, Collette Charbonneau

Originally considered to be an “upstart” activity, ecological restoration programs have grown in number, size, and funding level over the past decades. In this session, we will focus on the challenge of engaging in multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary evaluation for restoration programs that can involve many different kinds of individual projects. What measures, metrics, or suites of indicators do ecologists use to evaluate the success of a program of restoration actions (i.e., looking beyond the results of individual projects)? What types of evaluation approaches are used by economists and other social scientists? This evening session will bring together ecologists, economists, social scientists, and agency personnel to share their experiences of managing and evaluating restoration programs. Brief presentations by panel members representing a diversity of viewpoints and experiences will be followed by an interactive discussion open to all. This is an opportunity to think critically about what evaluation means from ecological, economic, and social science perspectives.

Environmental justice and ESA : ecologists and practitioners in dialogue. Implementing a vision for research, education, and outreach
Wednesday, August 9, 8-10 pm
Organizers: Leanne Jablonski, George Middendorf, Rachel O'Malley, Charles Nilon

The Environmental Justice (EJ) Working Group promotes the engagement of ecologists in addressing environmental injustice issues. EJ demands that there be no disproportionate impact on any one group and that there be full inclusion in environmental decision-making. Our goal is that all ESA members should understand the relationship between ecology and EJ and should work to address EJ issues. We are promoting these by: 1) educating members in EJ principles by producing an ESA Position Paper, identifying ESA members with expertise and interest relevant to EJ, and assisting ecologists in identifying EJ-relevant dimensions of their field; and 2) encouraging interactions with other organizations engaged in EJ issues, as well as collaborating with other professional organizations involved in major environmental projects. This year's annual meeting symposium, Linking Ecology and Environmental Justice, brings together leading ecologists who will reflect on the relationship of EJ and their ecological sub-discipline, with the goals of illustrating how ecologists can conduct science that is useful in decision making related to EJ issues and to encourage the development of research that incorporates societal concerns and community issues in design. In this discussion, a panel of EJ-practitioners, including some with experience in Memphis , will respond to the symposium presenters and share perspectives on what is needed from ecology and ecologists to address EJ-issues. Insights from a spring workshop between ecologists and practitioners will also be shared. Participants are invited to join the dialogue and provide feedback to our proposed next steps in advancing research, outreach and education initiatives.

Workshops

This program is NOT designed for bilingual scientists. Rather it is intended for use by scientists and other support staff who need to know limited and focused amounts of Spanish to function more productively in the field. Unlike traditional Spanish classes that attempt to teach the whole language over an unspecified time period, Command Spanish® classes utilize techniques that teach specific occupational language components in a limited time period. Basic expressions, cultural components, emergency vocabulary, and specific scientific field vocabulary will be covered using phonetic encoding, non-grammar based materials, generic Spanish, and qualified Command Spanish® certified instructors. This workshop is for two half days from 8 am -12 pm. Note: Registrants are expected to participate in both days of this two-day workshop.

Modeling patterns and dynamics of species occurrence
Saturday, August 5,, 8 am -5 pm
Organizers: Darryl MacKenzie, James Nichols

The occurrence of a species across a set of landscape units is a fundamental concept in ecology (e.g., species distribution, habitat modeling, metapopulation studies, long-term monitoring programs). However, to make robust conclusions about patterns and dynamics of species occurrence two important sampling issues must be explicitly accounted for; 1) only a fraction of the landscape units may be surveyed; and 2) the species may not always be detected when present at a landscape unit.

In this 1-day workshop participants will be introduced to the following topics: cutting-edge statistical methods for modeling patterns and dynamics of species occurrence, using models to address interesting ecological hypotheses, key aspects to designing studies of species occurrence, and available computer software with worked examples and exercises. Attendees have the opportunity to a copy of the instructor's recently published book Occupancy Estimation and Modeling: Inferring Patterns and Dynamics of Species Occurrence at the special discounted price of US$55 (RRP US$64.95). Contact Darryl (darryl@proteus.co.nz) to place your order which must be received by 24 July. For more information visit www.proteus.co.nz

Addressing environmental problems to stimulate undergraduate learning
Saturday, August 5; Sunday, August 6, 8 am -5 pm
Organizers: Michele Hluchy, James Haynes

Over the past two decades, we have developed a multidisciplinary approach to science education that uses environmental impact analysis as a theme to tie together the complex array of sampling/classification skills, research/analytical techniques, scientific theories, and communication skills that students need to address environmental problems. Although there are many types of environmental analyses (assessments, audits, technical reports, etc.), just as there are different strategies to facilitate science education, we have found that focusing on environmental impact statements (EISs) offers a broad based, pedagogically sound and accessible way to introduce undergraduate students and faculty to applied environmental problem solving at the same time we are teaching how science in any discipline is done. Creative faculty across the nation, in disciplines ranging from earth sciences and biology to chemistry, engineering, geography and sociology, have adapted and implemented our approach in their courses and programs and the National Science Foundation has awarded us with a CCLI-National Dissemination grant to present workshops on this approach regionally and nationally. Over the course of the two-day workshop we will: discuss the approach, providing fully-documented summaries with easily adaptable sample exercises of the teaching methods and curricula; work with participants to develop ways to integrate this approach into their own courses/curricula; and provide strategies and methods to write competitive proposals to external agencies for funding to help them implement some of the exercises on their campuses. An example exercise will also be done by the participants. Upon completion of this workshop you will be reimbursed $50 for the registration.

Ecoinformatics—using informatics tools to enhance the productivity of ecology researchers
Saturday, August 5, 8 am -12 pm
Organizers: Anne Fiala, Nalini Nadkarni, Judy Cushing, J. Lee Zeman

The Canopy Database Project (http://canopy.evergreen.edu) brings together forest canopy researchers and computer scientists to address issues of data acquisition, management, analysis, and exchange for canopy studies at all stages of the research process. We have developed ecoinformatics tools for ecologists, documented and published datasets that use these tools, and characterized forest canopy structures. With support from the National Science Foundation we have developed three prototype tools: 1) a database designer (“DataBank”) which helps ecologists design, archive, and mine field databases without specialized database knowledge; 2) a visualization tool (“CanopyView”) which creates forest structure data visualizations from DataBank datasets; and 3) a reference website for canopy research (the Big Canopy Database (BCD, canopy.evergreen.edu/bcd). With these tools, forest ecologists can reap the benefits of databases and visualization without learning a computer programming language. Ecologists working outside canopy studies, such as grassland researchers, have also found these tools useful. We will introduce these tools in a hands-on workshop for ecologists. We will first compare merits of spreadsheets and databases. Then we will demonstrate DataBank by creating a customized Microsoft Access database package that includes data-entry forms and html and ecological metadata language ( EML ) documentation. Finally, we will visualize sample forest structure datasets using CanopyView. This workshop will enhance each participant's ability to carry out his/her research, including synthetic research, which requires combining of data from multiple sources. Participants are encouraged to bring Windows O/S laptops to the workshop. Attendees will receive a CD containing the tools, presentation slides, relevant papers, and visualization samples.

Using and contributing to EcoEd.net--the ESA 's digital library for ecology education
Sunday, August 6, 8 am -12 pm
Organizers: Jason Taylor, Ken Klemow

The Internet has revolutionized ecology teaching by giving instructors access to a wealth of resources like images, text-based information, and data. Those resources are typically made available by faculty who post files to their own websites, and must be found through search engines or hit-or-miss strategies. To improve the exchange of digital resources useful for teaching ecology, the Ecological Society of America ( ESA ) has created Ecoed.net, which is part of the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library. The goal of Ecoed.net is to provide educators an effective, easy to use website to contribute and locate peer reviewed, scientifically and pedagogically sound ecology education content, including images, lab exercises, data, essays, and other materials. Ecoed.net is a partner in the Bioscience Education Network ( BEN ), a collaboration of more than ten professional societies and coalitions of biology education partners. BEN is funded by the National Science Foundation and coordinated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Thanks to renewed funding awarded in fall 2005, Ecoed.net promises to become THE website for all educators interested in obtaining or sharing digital resources covering a diverse array of ecological topics. To help ecologists effectively build and use Ecoed.net, the ESA 's Education Office is organizing a workshop that will have three purposes. First, workshop participants will become familiar with the history, organizational structure, and holdings of the website. The workshop organizers will show participants how to access EcoEd.net, and will demonstrate strategies for locating and obtaining content material of interest. Second, workshop participants will provide feedback concerning their perception of the site's effectiveness as a clearinghouse for digital ecology resources. Participants will work individually and in small groups to explore the site's holdings and comment on strengths and weaknesses in content and tools for identifying curricular resources contained by the site. Third, participants will learn how to contribute content to the site; thereby establishing a network of content providers that will ensure Ecoed.net achieves its goal of providing the best possible digital resources for teaching all areas of ecology.

Using the urban social-ecological system as a platform for integration of local and scientific knowledge
Sunday, August 6, 8 am -12 pm
Organizers: Hoski Schaafsma, Sara Borgström

One of the current issues of concern for ecosystem management is how to maintain biodiversity and create sustainable social-ecological systems. This issue has come into sharp focus as populations aggregate into expanding urban centers, making the interactions between the physical urban areas and their expansive ecological footprints even more obvious. The urban environment is a diverse center of different ways of knowing. One of these ways of knowing is local ecological knowledge, an upstart in the field, which has recently begun to gain acceptance by scientists and policy makers as an important additional source of knowledge about ecosystems on a local level. Local ecological knowledge is based on long-term close interactions between human communities and ecosystems. For this workshop we propose an integrated use of local ecological knowledge and scientific ecological knowledge systems to address the topic of Urban Ecological Knowledge. We want to challenge the participants to use this platform for investigating integration of different knowledge systems in order to identify methods for creating and maintaining sustainability. We will begin the session with a panel of speakers who will address issues of local ecological knowledge and urban ecology. Following that, we will break into working groups to develop methods of incorporating different knowledge bases into ways to understand sustainable social-ecological systems.

Projecting rates of invasive spread from demographic and dispersal data
Sunday, August 6, 8 am -12 pm
Organizers: Hal Caswell, Michael Neubert

The spread of an invasive species is determined by its demography and its patterns of dispersal. Demography describes how individual organisms “move” by development, through their life cycle. Studies of dispersal focus on how individuals “move”, via passive or active transport, through space. Recent developments have shown how to combine demography and dispersal into a single model incorporating both kinds of “movement.” In these models—integrodifference matrix population models—both development and dispersal can be stage-dependent. The models project the speed with which a population will invade an unoccupied space. This workshop will present an introduction to these models. Topics to be covered include: computation of the invasion speed from demographic and dispersal data; sensitivity and elasticity analysis of the invasion speed; LTRE analysis of the response of invasion speed to variation in dispersal and demography; and effects of seasonality, environmental stochasticity, two-sex interactions, and animal-mediated dispersal.

Ecology? Help establish guidelines for what every citizen should know
Sunday, August 6, 1-5 pm
Organizers: Rebecca Jordan, John Vaughn, Alan Berkowitz, Frederick Singer

The general public requires an understanding of general ecological concepts so they can help make decisions about the conservation and management of our resources. Given the development facing communities, it is essential that we promote ecological understanding in learning at all levels, from the primary classroom to adult opt-in experiences. Ecological principles should be infused into scientific and environmental literacy standards (e.g., K-12 standards, adult literacy guidelines, professional development benchmarks). To accomplish this, we need to answer: “What should every citizen know about ecology?” We are seeking to aid formal and informal educators in determining which concepts comprise essential understanding. Much of the educational information and resources provided by ESA are intended for undergraduate coursework and specialized study. Now, it is necessary for ecologists to consider the most important themes that all citizens need to understand. Following the model of Trombulak et al. (2004, Conservation Biology) which established conservation literacy benchmarks, we have planned a workshop for this endeavor. Themes to be considered were compiled by the working group (listed elsewhere) from ecology and environmental education texts. Workshop participants will divide into teams and amend themes as seen fit. Points of understanding that will help address each theme will then be listed. Output will be collected and compiled. The working group will mediate points of contention and a document will be distributed for participant review. A consensus document will be presented to the education committee during the following annual ESA meeting and is intended to appear as a publication in an ESA journal.

Practitioner research with TIEE
Sunday, August 6, 1-5 pm
Organizers: Charlene D'Avanzo, Bruce Grant, Deborah Morris

This workshop is designed to facilitate the use of TIEE (Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology) to help faculty improve their teaching and their students' learning. We will guide participants through the process of studying the effects of using a specific TIEE activity (e.g., an Issue or Experiment) on student learning based on underlying theories and research methods from educational and cognitive research. Ecologists may be surprised that faculty can study their own teaching scientifically and use their research findings to improve learning in their classes (from small seminars to large lecture classes). We refer to this as “practitioner research.” Participant outcomes include: 1) improved skills at asking researchable questions about teaching and learning; 2) broader base of assessment/research approaches and methods; and 3) enhanced ability to interpret one's research findings to modify one's teaching, i.e., to find out what works and why. Faculty who have already done “practitioner” research with TIEE will also describe their research and what they have learned about teaching and learning as a result.

Lessons from minority students: what educators need to know
Sunday, August 6 1-5 pm
Organizers: Katherine Hoffman, Melissa Armstrong

This workshop will provide information and techniques for educators to better engage minority students in the classroom, lab, field, and research programs. With input from students and education professionals, learn how to create a teaching environment that attracts and embraces diversity. Many people want to know how to enrich their ecology institutions and programs with greater cultural diversity; this workshop will provide concrete ideas on how this can be accomplished. Also learn more about positive mentoring to culturally diverse students and the many meaningful ways you can communicate with students to be a good mentor.

How to do collaborative ecological teaching and research using web pages and online resources: a watershed approach
Sunday, August 6, 1-5 pm
Organizers: Carolyn Thomas, Bob Pohlad

The workshop will be led by ecology professors from six different colleges in the Southern Appalachians (participants in a collaborative small watershed research and teaching project called Collaboration through Appalachian Watershed Studies (CAWS)). The link to “Icons and Upstarts in Ecology” theme is through the upstart idea of collaborative research projects, like the acid deposition study (2005 CAWS project) being conducted at 5 different small college campuses, instead of the iconic model of research universities. We will show that education of students and the public about how watershed processes work is just as important as the iconic model of pure research by research scientists in our work to preserve our Earth. These CAWS scientists have been using the lab exercises from the online Small Watersheds Lab Exercise eManual in a variety of classes, sharing online their data collected on their watershed by classes, and having their students use the other colleges' watershed data to better understand the dynamic processes of a variety of small watersheds in the Southern Appalachians. These professors will share their experience and expertise in using these online lab exercises with the workshop participants. The workshop is a ½ day workshop with the following outline of activities: a) History and Evolution of the CAWS Collaboration by Dr. Carolyn L. Thomas and Evolution of the Web Page by Dr. Bob R. Pohlad, Ferrum College ; b) Overview of the Watershed Methods Manual by Dr. Jeffery Simmons, West Virginia Wesleyan; c) Workshop participants will perform 1 or 2 lab exercises from the eManual which include cross campus students and scientists led by Dr. Karen Kuers, University of the South and Dr. Richard Moyer, King College; and d) How to establish your own watershed site by Dr. Susan Monteleone, Lindsey Wilson College and Dr. Mark Lassiter and Professor Mike Sonnenberg, Montreat College

A conceptual model for integration of social, ecological, and economic rangeland research
Sunday, August 6, 1-5 pm
Organizers: Kristie Maczko, R. Dennis Child, Dan McCollum

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to critique and improve a conceptual model of interactions among social, ecological, and economic aspects of rangeland research and resource management in the context of an indicator-based assessment system. Ecological systems and processes, including reproduction, growth, death, decomposition, succession, migration, adaptation, water cycles, nutrient cycles, and carbon cycles, stage the biological interactions underlying forest and rangeland ecosystem viability. Social and economic infrastructures and processes, including demand, investment, depreciation, management, social regulation, production, consumption, social interaction, and institutional processes, characterize rangeland use and management, as well as the context in which rangelands improve or decline. These systems and processes intertwine and feedback, altering natural and human capital and conditions over time. The Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable (SRR) has developed an integrated conceptual framework to capture complex relationships among ecological and natural resource processes and intricate interactions with social and economic processes, capacities, and capitals. The SRR conceptual framework flows through three tiers of increasing specificity to show relationships among bio-physical and socio-economic indicators. Tier 1 represents Earth's ecosystems generally as two interacting environmental and human sub-systems. Tier 2 shows more detail about key conditions in each sub-system and elaborates processes that may change those conditions. In Tier 2, process lists remain general to provide a basis for integrating multiple resource systems such as forests, rangelands, and/or water resources. Tier 3 identifies conditions and processes relevant to a rangeland resource system in specific and illustrates the important interactions among rangeland ecosystem components. Please join us for presentation and discussion of SRR 's conceptual model.

A brief introduction to hierarchical Bayesian modeling in ecology
Sunday, August 6, 8 am -5 pm
Organizers: Kiona Ogle, Inés Ibáñez, Brian Beckage, Janneke Hille, Ris Lambers

Ecologists and environmental scientists are often faced with analyzing relatively complicated data. For example, ecological data sets are often spatially, temporally, or hierarchically structured; they may be missing relevant information; and they likely arise from nonlinear (and non-Gaussian) processes. Additionally, many contemporary problems in ecology require the synthesis of multiple sources and types of data. To accommodate the complexity of ecological data, hierarchical Bayesian statistical methods are emerging as a powerful tool for analyzing such data. The purpose of this day-long workshop is to provide an overview of hierarchical Bayesian modeling at a relatively introductory level. This includes presentation and discussion of basic concepts, including important elements of Bayesian statistics and the general hierarchical modeling framework. We will also provide a brief overview of WinBUGS (a free software package for Bayesian analyses) and we will illustrate how it c an be used to implement a hierarchical Bayesian model. To complement the technical details, we will present case studies that employ hierarchical Bayesian analysis, where we focus on the modeling procedure in addition to the ecological problem. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to understand the fundamentals of hierarchical Bayesian modeling. We will provide reference materials so that participants can explore the topic in greater depth. These materials should serve as a jumping-off point for those interested in employing the methods in their own research or for those who simply want to familiarize themselves with the topic. Participants are requested to bring their own laptops; no computers will be provided!

Multiple linear regression using R
Sunday, August 6, 9 am -5 pm
Organizers: Rohan Sadler, Candan Soykan

Ecologists explore relationships between multiple processes in ecological systems as a natural consequence of ecological systems being highly complex. Consequently, data are often multivariate with important correlations “hidden” by complex interactions between processes. Multiple linear regression is a fundamental statistical analysis by which significant interactions can be identified and separated from “noise”. The workshop will serve as a practical introduction to the R statistical language by having participants step through the process of multiple linear regression. No knowledge of R is assumed. Hence, participants begin with the basics of R syntax and progress with a series of “mini-labs”. Topics include: data management; exploratory analysis of multivariate data; defining and using qualitative factor variables; applying and interpreting the model; variable selection; and regression diagnostics. Coverage of the topics will necessarily be brief, but participants will have successfully applied multiple linear regression tools to “real” ecological data by the end of the workshop. Participants are requested to bring their own laptops with R pre-loaded as no computers will be provided.

Innovative teaching and active learning in the biological sciences
Sunday, August 6, 8:30 am -4:30 pm
Organizers: Diane Ebert-May, Janet Batzli, Douglas Luckie

We invite postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and early career faculty to participate in a workshop modeling ‘scientific teaching', learning, and assessment in undergraduate science courses. We especially want to meet the needs of these future faculty and faculty early in their teaching careers. The workshop is based on current research about undergraduate science curriculum reform, how students learn, and how assessment improves student learning. We will focus on teaching in both large and small courses and address the hows and whys to: (1) actively engage students in learning in classroom and laboratory environments, (2) use cooperative learning, (3) develop multiple kinds of assessments based on goals that provide substantive data about student learning, (4) analyze and use assessment data to improve instruction, (5) use technology-based tools to improve learning, and (6) use an assessment database. We also will address the realities of time (again and again), student course evaluations, faculty evaluations, and establishment of networks for intellectual and practical support in teaching. By the end of the workshop, participants should be ready to design their first course and implement these ideas on the first day of class this fall! The fee includes continental breakfast, lunch, and snacks. For more information please contact: Diane Ebert-May, Michigan State University , 517-432-7171, ebertmay@msu.edu

Highlights of SEEDS campus ecology chapters
Monday, August 7, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Katherine Hoffman, Melissa Armstrong, Jeramie Strickland

Campus Ecology Chapters are one key component of the ESA 's SEEDS program, which strives to diversify and advance the profession of ecology by promoting opportunities that stimulate and nurture the interest of underrepresented students. Numbering almost thirty, SEEDS Campus Ecology Chapters serve as local affiliates of the program, furthering the mission of SEEDS through ecology education, outreach, recruitment, and career development on campuses throughout the country. At this workshop, Chapters represented at the Annual Meeting will share their accomplishments from the past academic year. Chapter projects have included constructing a greenhouse, building a nature trail, planting native species on campus, and organizing a conference on Native American pathways in ecology. All are welcome to attend and this session will be especially useful for those who are interested in starting a Chapter. Lunch is provided.

Opportunities for funding in environmental biology and related areas at NSF
Monday, August 7, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Henry Gholz, Martyn Caldwell, Saran Twombly, Emily Leichtman

National Science Foundation (NSF) program directors from the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) and related programs will discuss sources of funding for environmental research, including the core research-funding programs within DEB and other research and educational programs in the Directorate for Biological Sciences as well as in other NSF directorates. The current status of each program and target dates for proposal submission will be shown. Key aspects of the peer review process and suggestions for writing successful research proposals will also be discussed. More importantly, program directors will provide honest answers to questions regarding NSF funding for ecological research. Our goal is to provide insight into the opportunities and process for obtaining NSF support for environmental research and education projects. Lunch is provided.

How you can REALLY achieve conservation goals: merging academic research with management and restoration
Tuesday, August 8, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Alice Levine

For many researchers in academia the standard of “publish or perish” not only drives their productivity, but also defines the kinds of research questions asked and the manner in which they are investigated. Studies on conservation and restoration ecology must therefore be limited in their duration and conducted on smaller scales than what actual management decisions are applied towards. Under these conditions, is it possible for academic researchers to tackle and accomplish management-level objectives? Or is restoration itself better facilitated by working with state, federal or non-governmental organizations? How would you go about starting and running a non-governmental organization of your own instead? If these topics interest you, then don't miss this workshop! Dynamic speakers experienced in habitat protection and restoration through working with academic researchers, state, government and NGO groups, and creating and managing non-profit organizations will be in attendance to share their thoughts and experiences on these issues. Lunch is provided.

SEEDS program: how ESA members can get involved
Tuesday, August 8, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Katherine Hoffman, Melissa Armstrong

ESA 's successful SEEDS (Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability) program strives to diversify and advance the profession of ecology by promoting opportunities that stimulate and nurture the interest of underrepresented students. Celebrating its tenth year, SEEDS continues to attract highly talented students to the field of ecology through campus ecology chapters, field trips, travel awards to the ESA Annual Meeting, and undergraduate research fellowships. This workshop will provide ESA members with information on SEEDS and how they can become involved in the program. Opportunities for rewarding involvement include hosting a field trip, giving a presentation to a chapter school, and mentoring students. Lunch is provided.

Scientific teaching in environmental education: focus group discussions
Wednesday, August 9, 11:30 am -1:15 pm
Organizers: Bob Pohlad, Kathy Williams

During the 2005 ESA Meeting in Montreal a number of the education section members met to discuss "what, why, and how" we can help faculty succeed at scientific teaching in ecology. Eight focus groups were established including: 1) Standards—what do we want them to know/do; 2) Issues of diversity in class; 3) Public understanding; 4) Literature review based on cognition; 5) Distance learning; 6) Field work and IT; 7) Diagnostic assessment tools; and 8) Course design. Online discussion through the Education Section web site until the Annual Meeting will refine these groups. This session will include breakout groups to propose the next steps for action. Lunch is provided. Lunch is provided.

How to integrate educational outreach in your research studies
Wednesday, August 9, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Alice Levine, Jennifer Skene

Have you ever thought about incorporating educational outreach in your research? GK-12 or related science outreach programs are becoming more commonplace in universities, providing opportunities for graduate students and professors to interact with young students. For individual researchers though, it's difficult to integrate these experiences into their own studies if they don't have the resources, know-how, or support from a larger outreach program. However, it's vital for individual scientists to learn to better communicate and continue working with the non-science community, instead of just with other scientists. Making this transition is the next great leap to developing a society that values, supports, and rewards interactions between scientists and laymen. Don't miss this workshop! All of these issues and more will be discussed by a panel of professors, graduate students, and educational outreach program coordinators with varying levels of experience integrating students and laymen volunteers into their research. Lunch is provided.

The bruchid bean beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus , a model system for inquiry-based undergraduate laboratories
Wednesday, August 9, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Lawrence Blumer, Christopher Beck

Bean beetles, Callosobruchus maculatus (Coleoptera: Bruchidae), are tropical and subtropical agricultural pest insects. This species is among the most tractable and robust laboratory animal systems but it is not widely used outside of research laboratories. C. maculatus is extremely easy to manipulate and maintain and has a very rapid life cycle. Extensive past and present research on C. maculatus (more than 150 journal articles in the past 10 years) provides opportunities for connections between undergraduate laboratory studies and research in ecology, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior. The purpose of this workshop is to develop faculty expertise in the use of C. maculatus in undergraduate laboratory courses. Bean beetle culture information will be presented in this workshop including: natural history, life cycle, culture techniques, generation time at different temperatures, sex identification, handling techniques, mating beetles, and isolating virgins. Participants will get hands-on experience working with live bean beetles. An oviposition-substrate choice experimental protocol will be introduced that can be readily implemented as an inquiry-based study in introductory or advanced undergraduate laboratory courses. In this experiment, we will test the hypothesis that female bean beetles discriminate between seeds of the species from which they emerged (natal seeds) and seeds of another species that are readily accepted as an oviposition substrate. Participants will each receive a live bean beetle culture to take, a hardcopy of our bean beetle handbook, information about laboratory protocols being developed, and web resources available at our website: www.beanbeetles.org. Lunch is provided.

Ecology in an undergraduate curriculum
Wednesday , August 9 , 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Jason Taylor, Saran Twombly, Carol Brewer, Jen Marangelo

In 1996, the Ecological Society of America ( ESA ) sponsored a survey of Ecology in the Undergraduate Curriculum that was sent to members at 318 institutions. Results from this survey (Brewer 1998) have motivated significant change in science education. ESA has been at the forefront of these changes through its sponsorship of innovative teaching approaches, programs to increase diversity, and its recognition of the contributions of ecological educators with the prestigious Odum Education Award. In 2004 the Education and Human Resources committee of ESA conducted a new survey to assess what progress has been made over the last 5–10 years and to identify key challenges in educating undergraduates in the broad field of ecology. This lunchtime workshop will present the result of this survey and explore with participants how data from the survey help us develop a profile of how ecology is taught. Lunch is provided.

Building an interactive database for classroom assessment
Thursday, August 10, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Everett Weber, Kathy Williams, Diane Ebert-May

The objective of this workshop is to cultivate a community of ecological educators to help design and implement a database of assessment items (e.g., probing questions and rubrics for assessing responses), including associated metadata (e.g., class size and level) and student responses. With the growing number of faculty developing and using multiple forms of assessment to quantify student learning gains, there is a clear need to share and build on what others have done. In this workshop, participants will learn to use and contribute to an interactive database for student assessment instruments and data. Participants will explore a sample database of existing assessment instruments and student performance results. Participants also will review ways to contribute to the database using a variety of file formats so their items and results can be used and cited. For example, faculty might search and download questions and student responses to evolution multiple choice items or extended response questions. An important part of this workshop will be to gather information from attendees about how they might use this tool to further develop effective education metadata standards. Lunch is provided.

How to get a post-doc
Thursday, August 10, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Candan Soykan, Rohan Sadler

Many graduate students stress over finding a post-doc position after graduation. Numerous factors contribute to this stress including a need to focus on one's dissertation work in order to graduate, competition for positions, family/significant other considerations, a lack of knowledge of available opportunities, and limited understanding of how to apply for a position. This workshop aims to alleviate some of that stress by highlighting the range of available post-doc opportunities, providing basic guidance on how to apply for a post-doctoral position, and offering general information on expectations, timelines, and other considerations. The workshop will include a panel of individuals representing different career stages and employment opportunities. The panelists will open with a series of brief presentations to be followed by a question and answer period. Participants will come away with a better understanding of the post-doctoral application process, the range of post-doctoral positions available to ecologists, and realistic goals in terms of publications, research, teaching, and other experiences. Lunch is provided.

Bridging the worlds of science and journalism: working with the media
Thursday, August 10, 11 :30 am-1:15 pm
Organizers: Cynthia Barakatt, Jessica Brown, Diana Wall

Learn to be an effective communicator when talking to journalists about your science. Understanding how to translate your science for different audiences is a key to success—whether talking to journalists, submitting a paper to a scientific journal, preparing a grant proposal, presenting to a public official, collaborating with a natural resource management staff, or writing an op-ed for your local paper. This interactive workshop will help you hone your ability to get the results you seek by developing clear and concise messages tailored for specific audiences and offer practical advice for interacting specifically with the media. Workshop trainers include senior scientists experienced in interacting with journalists who will share their insights and provide individual feedback on how to strengthen your message. Topics covered will include: What Do Journalists Want, Do's and Don't's, and Managing Your Message. This workshop is presented by the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program (www.leopoldleadership.org) which provides communications and leadership training fellowships for mid-career scientists. This session is appropriate for graduate students, post-docs, and early career environmental scientists as well as scientists at mid-career. The workshop trainers are from the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and SeaWeb/COMPASS. Lunch is provided.