BES Facebook pageBES Annual Meeting 2010
7 - 9 September,
University of Leeds, UK
Ecological networks: community robustness and persistence
Daniel B. Stouffer
While scientists have been contemplating the interactions between species since Darwin's “entangled bank,” their analysis has flourished in recent decades. By incorporating tools from fields as diverse as statistical physics and epidemiology to develop a “network approach to ecology,” researchers are performing detailed investigations of the structure and dynamics of species-interaction networks.
As a direct consequence, we have gained direct insight into what makes an ecological community more robust to perturbations and more able to persist and maintain biodiversity.
Keynote speaker:
Lord Robert M. May of Oxford, OM AC FRS, Oxford University, UK
Title: Stability and Complexity in Ecological Networks
This talk will survey our growing understanding of the relationships between the network structure of ecological networks – both in mathematical models and in the real world – and their ability to withstand disturbance, natural or human-created. I will also briefly discuss recent interest in the potential relevance of this work to “systemic risk” and regulatory measures in banking systems (see, e.g. The Bank of England Report by Haldane, 2009), emphasising the similarities and differences.
Invited speakers:
Stefano Allesina, University of Chicago, USA
Jordi Bascompte, Estación Biológica de Doñana – CSIC, Spain
Ulrich Brose, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany
Michio Kondoh, Ryukoku University, Japan
Kevin S. McCann, University of Guelph, Canada
If you have any comments or questions, please contact Daniel directly.
