Conference Description
The Gordon Research Seminar on Unifying Ecology Across Scales is a unique forum for graduate students, post-docs, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education to present and exchange new data and cutting edge ideas.
At this meeting, we aim to answer the question: What measurable features of ecological systems operating at one scale emerge in the structure and dynamics operating at other spatial, temporal, and organizational scales?
The search for general principles is particularly challenging in ecology given the incredible diversity of systems, taxa, and processes operating on different spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. Remarkable generality exists in broad patterns such as latitudinal diversity gradients and metabolic scaling relationships. But understanding the mechanisms producing these patterns requires linking processes across scales. These cross-scale comparisons may reveal general constraints that operate in ecological systems, or they may provide insights into ecological strategies that allow organisms to escape constraints, producing variation around broad patterns. We aim to figure out which ecological processes and features mechanistically link processes across scales. To do this, we will bring together diverse perspectives from fields including physiology, evolutionary biology, ecological stoichiometry, macroecology, and metabolic scaling.
