session description
Over the last century, ecologists have faced the challenge of understanding the dynamic processes that structure species distributions. Different subfields of ecology have contributed substantially to this task, working at the scale of local communities to entire biogeographic regions. Despite studying relevant and interrelated processes, ecologists struggle to integrate this knowledge across disparate spatial scales and ecological disciplines. In the next 100 years, this synthesis becomes even more urgent given the urgent need to forecast the effects of global climate change on ecological systems. Currently, attempts to tackle this issue rely on a suite of niche models that correlate species’ environmental requirements with their large-scale geographic distributions (e.g. species distribution models, bioclimatic envelope models, habitat suitability models, etc.). However, these correlative models ignore important ecological knowledge about species interactions gained over decades of experiments and observational studies, the results of which show that biotic interactions can structure species distributions and contribute to species coexistence. This problematic deficiency has been noted and widely debated for the past decade (Pearson & Dawson 2003, Zarnetske et al. 2012, 2012 special issue of Journal of Biogeography, Wisz et al. 2013, 2013 special issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,among others).
We argue that the discussion should shift from whether or not biotic interactions are relevant to species distributions, to at what scale do these patterns manifest and how do we integrate our understanding of processes acting at different spatial scales. The fundamental challenge to addressing the role of biotic interactions is that it requires bridging theoretical, process-based models of species interaction networks with spatially explicit, correlative models of species geographic distributions. Further, available information to build these models ranges from individual-based, biophysical effects of climate change, to global occurrence records. Thus, bridging the gap between these disciplines requires a synthesis of current methods, a conceptualization of how these methods can be integrated, and a discussion about emerging methods.
About the Co-organizers
A mutual interest in learning more about species distribution modeling brought us together, forming an informal reading group in September 2013. For the past two years, we've been diving into the literature on species distribution modeling and, more specifically, biotic controls on species distribution. Our training in experimental ecology in particular has driven our interest in thinking about how information from small-scale studies and ecological theory can inform the predictability of distributional shifts with climate change. From these discussions, we've organized this session to bring together ecologists working on the forefront of this subject, conceptually, theoretically, and experimentally.
lindsey thurmanLindsey is an amphibian ecologist and Ph.D. Candidate in Fisheries & Wildlife at Oregon State University. She is also a Research Fellow with the DOI's Northwest Climate Science Center. Her dissertation research focuses on the spatial scaling of biotic interactions within amphibian communities and the implications for species' individualistic versus linked responses to climate change stressors.
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Allison barnerAllie is a community ecologist and Ph.D. Candidate in Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. Her research is broadly focused on the processes that influence species coexistence and community assembly, from species interactions to metabolic constraints, using the diverse assemblage of species in the US Pacific Northwest rocky intertidal as a model system.
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