OOS 59
Shifting Dimensions: Temporal Ecology for the Next 100 Years and Beyond

Thursday, August 13, 2015: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
314, Baltimore Convention Center
Organizer:
Neil Pederson
Co-organizer:
Kendra K. McLauchlan
Moderator:
Kendra K. McLauchlan
Thirty years ago a transformation in ecological thinking was underway, precipitated in part by questions of how anthropogenic habitat loss and fragmentation affected populations, communities, and ecosystems. Addressing these questions required ecologists to work at scales far larger than their traditional plot sizes, statistical methods and theories allowed, and required integrating perspectives and methods from other disciplines (e.g., geography and evolution) to build upon and develop a body of theories (e.g., island biogeography, metapopulation) and concepts (edge effects and corridors). The field of spatial ecology subsequently emerged from this as an integrative, multidisciplinary science adept at developing concepts and theory to address both basic and applied ecological challenges. Alongside the human modification of space and rise of spatial ecology, anthropogenic forces have also shifted the temporal dynamics of many systems. Large-scale human modification of the earth system has impacted the temporal dynamics of many populations and ecosystems via alteration of disturbance cycles (e.g., fire), introduction of exotic species, and even habitat modification itself. Such impacts are especially apparent with climate change, which—from arctic to temperate biomes— has fundamentally altered how organisms experience time. It has also spurred a new body of research and pressed ecology to revisit fundamental questions of how temporal dynamics structure ecological systems. With the increasing availability of long-term data, however, new challenges have arisen. These include creeping timescale issues: population dynamics that appear more complex when examined in longer time series, selection that weakens when integrated over longer periods, as well as shifts in trends, including responses that reverse over time. Yet a unified field of temporal ecology—with robust theory to explain these issues—has yet to emerge. Instead, within and across disciplines, vocabularies have diverged, often producing different terms for similar concepts, highlighting the need for a common interdisciplinary forum. We argue that there is a compelling current need to develop a unified framework for temporal ecology—one that builds on new data and methods and provides a new focus for predicting how shifting environments shape populations, species, communities and ecosystems. Here we offer a starting point by bringing together speakers who have specifically considered the temporal dimension from across the fields of community ecology, evolution, paleoecology, and climate science. Our focus is on important connections with spatial ecology (autocorrelation, scaling) and the unique aspects of time (events and nonstationarity) that could form the basis of a new framework for temporal ecology.
9:00 AM
Large herbivore effects on terrestrial nitrogen availability in Late Pleistocene Britain
Elizabeth S. Jeffers, University of Oxford; Michael B. Bonsall, University of Oxford; Katherine J. Willis, University of Oxford; Cynthia Froyd, Swansea University; Steve J. Brooks, Natural History Museum; Nicki Whitehouse, Plymouth University; Adrian Lister, Natural History Museum, London; Phil Barratt, Queen's University Belfast; Phillip Lamb, University of East Anglia
9:20 AM
Five decades of overfishing could disrupt an ancient mutualism between frugivorous fish and plants in Neotropical wetlands
Sandra Bibiana Correa, University of Georgia; Joisiane Araujo, Federal University of MatoGrosso; Jerry Penha, Federal University of MatoGrosso; Catia Nunes da Cunha, Federal University of MatoGrosso; Pablo R. Stevenson, Universidad de los Andes; Jill T. Anderson, University of Georgia
9:40 AM
9:50 AM
Extrinsic and intrinsic forcing of regime shifts: A 3,000-year record of climate and lake-productivity changes in Minnesota
David Nelson, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science; Ryan Kelly, Boston University; Jian Tian, University of Illinois; Melissa Chipman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Feng Sheng Hu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
10:10 AM
Keeping time in a space-for-time substitution: A chronosequence of forest histories at Jefferson's Monticello plantation
Daniel L. Druckenbrod, Rider University; Fraser D. Neiman, Thomas Jefferson Foundation; David Richardson, The Nature Conservancy; Derek Wheeler, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
10:30 AM
Residence time: An overlooked constraint on community assembly and structure
Kenneth Locey, Indiana University; Jay T. Lennon, Indiana University
10:50 AM
Evolution of phenotypic plasticity and ecological specialization in temporally varying environments
Nancy C. Emery, Purdue University; Lorena Torres-Martinez, Purdue University; P. Suresh Rao, Purdue University