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Symposium
24: Bridging the gap between theory and empiricism in ecology
Endorsed
by the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)
Friday,
August 12, 8 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 517c, Level 5, Palais
des congrès de Montréal
Organizers:
Priyanga Amarasekare (amarasek@uchicago.edu), Michael Neubert
Description: The
feedback between theory and data has been integral to every significant
conceptual advance in ecology. The puzzling but compelling patterns unearthed by
empiricists have been the fodder for theorists intent on explaining the
patterns, and tests of these theories by empiricists have in turn provided the
insights necessary to delve deeper into a more satisfying understanding of the
patterns. This symposium will explore a range of topics at the forefront of
current ecological thinking – disease dynamics, invasion ecology, spatial
dynamics, multi-species interactions – in all of which a tighter integration
of theory and data is necessary, both from a basic scientific point of view and
well as from a more applied one. The goals are to: (1) highlight recent conceptual advances in these important
areas; and (2) illustrate avenues for translating theory into testable
hypotheses and how data, both experimental and observational, may be used to
test and refine the theory.
 
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