BES Facebook pageBES Annual Meeting 2010
7 - 9 September,
University of Leeds, UK
On the synthesis of size- and species- based approaches in community and ecosystem ecology
Dr Richard Law and Dr Julia Blanchard
Body size and species identity both contribute to the complex webs of interaction that determine the structure and function of ecosystems. Interest in the role of body size stems from the fact that, in aquatic ecosystems, predator-prey interactions can depend more on body size than on species identity. This is because organisms often grow over orders of magnitude during their lives, changing their prey as they do so. Body size may also be a useful indicator of food-web and ecosystem structure beyond aquatic ecology. This thematic topic will highlight current research work at the interface of size- and species-based approaches.
Keynote speaker:
Prof Joel E. Cohen, The Rockefeller University, New York, USA
Two major factors seem likely to stimulate and enable an enormous development of food web studies in the 21st century: practical needs and new scientific tools. This talk will speculate about the future of food webs, based on current needs and research. It seems reasonable to anticipate that increasing human populations and increasing wealth will drive growing demand for food, feed, and fuel from living sources, despite growing challenges from the environment, and that powerful new techniques for observing and analyzing food webs will continue to appear even faster than they have over the past
quarter-century.
Invited speakers:
Andre de Roos, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Owen Petchey, Sheffield University, UK
Ken Andersen, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
Bo Ebenman, Linkoping University, Sweden
If you have any comments or questions about this thematic, please contact Richard directly.
