Symposia
Island Biogeography (Monday, 8:00-10:15 am)
Organizer: Sandra Nogué
Islands have fascinated scientists since the times of Hooker and Darwin. They are often described as natural laboratories that provide model systems for the testing of biogeographic, ecological, and evolutionary theories. In this symposium, we will present and discuss the latest advances in island Biogeography covering a range of temporal scales and using examples from plants and animals.
Sandra Nogué, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona/CREAF: Introduction [5 min]
Martha Paola Barajas Barbosa: “A picture of plant functional diversity on an oceanic island (Tenerife, Canary Islands)“
Manuel Steinbauer: “Biodiversity dynamics: from the fossil record to human dominated systems“
Roberto Rozzi: “The demise of dwarfs and giants: body size shifts predispose insular mammals to anthropogenic extinctions”
Sonya Clegg: “The evolutionary story of a great speciator: the silvereye in the south Pacific”
Keonhak Lee & Daehyun Kim: “An island biogeographical analysis of the uninhabited islands in the Shinan Province, South Korea”
The Biogeography of Cities – Biogeographic, ecological and evolutionary patterns and processes in urban areas (Monday, 10:45 am -12:30 pm)
Organizer: Susanne Renner
Some 56% of the world’s population live in cities, and by 2050, with the urban population more than doubling its current size, nearly 7 of 10 people in the world will live in cities (https://www.worldbank.org/en/home). Enhancing our understanding of the biota of cities therefore is crucial for making cities a more nature-inclusive environment. This symposium brings together research on city-dwelling trees, birds, and insects, bracketed by talks on historic, socioeconomic, and cultural drivers.
Susanne S. Renner, Dept. of Biology, University of Washington in Saint Louis, USA: Introduction [5 min]
Elizabeth J. Carlen, Living Earth Collaborative, Washington University, Saint Louis, USA: “Linking the past to the present: How human history has shaped the distribution and evolution of urban wildlife“
Manuel Esperón-Rodríguez, Western Sydney University, Australia: “Can climate niche and functional traits facilitate the expansion of urban tree species in cities worldwide?”
Federico Morelli, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic: “The global decline of evolutionary uniqueness of avian communities within cities: conservation implications”
Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus University, Denmark : “Urban greenspaces to benefit people and biodiversity – a biogeographic-macroecological perspective”
Sarel Cilliers and Marie du Toit, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa: “Socioeconomics and culture as drivers of urban biodiversity patterns in the Global South”
Network Biogeography: The Present and Future of Terrestrial Food Webs (Tuesday, 8:00 – 10:15 am)
Co-organizers: Laura Pollock (McGill University, Canada) and Núria Galiana Ibáñez (National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid, Spain)
Food webs, like other ecological networks, are dynamic in nature, allowing them to shift and re-wire in response to change. Food webs have survived periods of intense climate change, human defaunation, and mass extinctions, but the magnitude and speed at which contemporary climate change is occurring may outpace the ability of ecological networks, and the species that comprise them, to respond. This symposium focuses on how knowledge of past and present food web structure, and of their resilience, may help to better protect them and perhaps predict their future.
Laura Pollock, McGill University, Canada: Introduction [5 min]
Dominique Gravel, University of Sherbrooke, Canada: “Beyond the species list: Ecological networks to represent the biogeography of ecological communities“
Wilfried Thuiller, Alpine Ecology Lab, University of Grenoble Alpes, France: “Biogeography of food webs: Trophic diversity, models, and forecasts“
Núria Galiana, National Museum of Natural Science, Madrid, Spain: “Climate or diet? The importance of biotic interactions in determining species range size“
Louise M. J. O’Connor, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria: “An overview of emerging approaches for conserving food webs across space“
Miguel Bastos Araújo, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid, Spain: “Emerging patterns in trophic network biogeography“
The Ecological Consequences of Ecosystem Engineering Over the Past 600 Million Years (Tuesday, 10:45 am – 12:30 pm)
Co-organizers: S. Kathleen Lyons (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and Amelia Villaseñor (The University of Arkansas)
The term ‘ecosystem engineers’ refers to organisms that can both create and eliminate niche space for other taxa and are thus a crucial control on local and regional diversity. Modern ecological theory recognizes the importance of ecosystem engineers in maintaining ecosystems and ecosystem services. This symposium extends the concept of ecosystem engineering to deep-time (>500 million years ago) and evolutionary contexts and showcases research from different disciplinary perspectives including ecology, paleoecology, geobiology, and anthropology.
Kate Lyons, University of Nebraska Lincoln, United States, Introduction [5 minutes]
Simon Darroch, Senckenberg Museum of Natural History, Frankfurt, Germany: “How to build a habitable planet: a new framework for studying ecosystem engineering in deep time“
Katherine Turk, Vanderbilt University, United States, and Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt: “Elucidating the effects of Ediacaran-Cambrian ecosystem engineering: A neoichnological case study“
William Matthaeus, Trinity College Dublin School of Natural Sciences: “Bridges to Pangaea: Paleo-trait ecology connects us to deep-time Earth systems“
Torben Rick, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States: “Origins and Evolution of Pelagic Fisheries in the Northeast Pacific” (co-authors: Linda Bentz, Todd Braje, and Emma Elliott Smith)
Liesbeth Bakker, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Wageningen, The Netherlands: “Restoring natural processes through rewilding with ecosystem engineers“