Toward a Predictive Ecology of the Anthropocene

The Anthropocene Epoch is named for the unprecedented impact of a single species – humans – on the diversity and functioning of life on Earth. Human impact has reached all corners of the globe due to the circulation of pollutants, changes to communities from harvesting pressures, human-aided movement of invasive species, and the altered composition of the atmosphere. Impacts on populations and communities often begin at the molecular or physiological level, through the effects of toxins, temperature, or other abiotic factors. These impacts scale up to cell and organismal levels, potentially altering demography, and therefore rates of population growth. Changes in population growth can change the relative abundance of species in communities, further altering species interactions and therefore community functioning and diversity. Understanding how natural systems respond to human impacts thus requires ‘scaling up’ across levels of organization. This scaling up requires the integration of concepts, theories, and empirical approaches linked to many types of biological research, from genetics and physiology to ecology and evolutionary biology. The Unifying Ecology GRC will bring together researchers to focus on understanding and predicting ecological change in the Anthropocene through the integration and unification of diverse fields of biological research.