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Symposia
5:Marine
macroecology
Tuesday,
August 9, 8 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 517b,
Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Organizers:
Jon Witman (Jon_Witman@brown.edu),
Kaustuv
Roy
Description: Over the
past 20 years there has been a growing interest in research aimed at
understanding the physical and biological processes underlying biodiversity and
other ecological patterns at large spatial scales. Macroecological analyses have
the potential to reveal actual boundaries of relationships between variables
because they are typically based on large amounts of data. Interpretation of the
resulting patterns or properties gives rise to causal hypotheses (processes) for
the patterns. Macroecology relies on statistical analyses of information from
fields such as population and community ecology, biogeography, and paleontology.
A complementary approach considers manipulative experiments replicated on large
spatial scales as the units of analysis. Experimental macroecology can
potentially test hypotheses about ecological processes more directly than a
statistical approach, but may be limited in application since experimental
manipulations on regional to global scales are logistically difficult for many
systems. Both approaches foster a better understanding of processes governing
the distribution, abundance, and diversity of species from local to global
spatial scales.
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