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OOS-39: Consequences of dispersal and colonization: What happens when
communities are opened?
Wednesday,
August 10, 1:30 PM - 5 PM Meeting Room 516c, Level 5, Palais
des congrès de Montréal
Organizers:
Carla Guthrie (cguthrie@mail.utexas.edu),
Donald Yee
Description:
Many
theories addressing local community dynamics were developed and tested under the
assumption that ecological communities were closed entities. While this may be a
simplifying assumption, this viewpoint failed to consider the importance of
regional processes, such as dispersal, migration, and colonization on local
interactions. However in the last 15 years, and particularly with the influence
of metapopulation theory, ecologists have been asking detailed questions about
how dispersal and colonization influence assembly dynamics, population dynamics,
local interactions, and hence food web structure and species composition within
communities. Under this new paradigm, we are revisiting and revising earlier
theories to test their robustness. These studies also provide a foundation for
the field of metacommunity ecology, which provides a framework to better
understand ecological dynamics at multiple scales. This session addresses the
importance of colonization and dispersal in structuring a variety of animal
communities, with a strong focus on how these processes affect existing
theories. This session invites ecologists with relevant research programs to
discuss how their work advances community ecology.
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