Postgraduate Course on ‘Linking Community and Ecosystem Dynamics’ This is the second announcement of the winter school for PhD students and Postdocs on Linking Community and Ecosystem Dynamics organized by Research School Ecology & Evolution of the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES; University of Groningen, Netherlands).
The school will be held in the University field station ‘De Herdershut’ on the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog from October 21 – 26 2018. We are very happy to announce that this year we will have two special guest lecturers: Dr Trisha B Atwood (Utah State University) and Dr Shai Pilosof (University of Chicago). Dr Atwood is assistant professor and chair of the Aquatic Ecology and Global Change Lab. She and her team members are interested in three broad research themes across all aquatic ecosystems (marine, estuarine, freshwater, and riparian zones). 1. The effects of global change on aquatic food webs and species interactions. 2. How food webs and species interactions influence ecosystem function. 3. The role of aquatic ecosystems in climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. By focusing on these three broad questions, her research has taken her all over the world with studies in Hawaii, Canada, Costa Rica, and Australia (including The Great Barrier Reef). Dr Pilosof is postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago, ​in the lab of Mercedes Pascual. He is mostly interested in the application of network theory to ecological systems, specifically in the field of disease ecology. He uses a complex systems approach to study the factors that effect spread of disease in animal communities and from animals to humans. His research is unique as it takes the individual point of view: 1. What is the role of individual heterogeneity in shaping host-parasite interactions at the community level? 2. How does genetic variation affect infection with parasites in different hosts? 3. How does individual heterogeneity translate to efficiency of disease spread in host communities? Scope of the course The research fields community and ecosystem ecology have diverged more or less independently over the last decennia. In community ecology progress is made in understanding shifts in community composition under the influence of environmental change and how these shifts can be explained by functional trait approaches of component species. Also, the importance of positive feedbacks in community dynamics is more and more appreciated, and merged with trophic interactions in ecological networks. Studies in ecosystem ecology traditionally have a strong focus on energy and nutrient fluxes and how deviation in these fluxes affect ecosystem functioning and stability. Recent studies reveal tight links between these sub-disciplines that enforce us to rethink how communities and ecosystems interact. This course focuses on theoretical concepts, such as autocatalytic loops and positive and negative feedbacks between organisms in ecological networks as well as the importance of non-trophic interactions by ecosystem engineers. The course will address how these principles can be used to link communities to ecosystems enabling a better understanding of how environmental changes affect community and ecosystem dynamics. Students will construct ecological networks of their own study system or based on literature data and analyze these using structural equation modelling. Course Set-up The course is composed of a series of lectures, a poster session, analyzing ecological networks using structural equation modelling and finalized with a debating session. Poster session: Prior to the course, participants submit a poster of their work (A4-size) in PDF, which will be printed and included in the course reader. The poster contains your name and affiliation, title and short description of research project (including concepts) with one highlight (something exciting) and the reason you want to participate in this course. During the course, participants briefly pitch their research (maximum 3 slides) and indicate where they would like to receive input from the course participants and lecturers. Lectures and discussion: Each day starts with a key speaker who will give a lecture on one of the key course topics (covering both general theory and own research). After the lecture we'll have a discussion which is convened by three participants who challenge the speaker on the lecture and two papers that the speaker submitted which are related to the topic of the lecture (participants will receive these before the course to prepare them self). Group activities: In the afternoons, participants will be split into working groups, which will work on specific group assignments associated with the topic of the course (design ecological networks and analyzing these). The exact topics of these activities will be selected by the participants. Each group will present the results to all course participants the following day. Group activities will be supervised by the lecturers and course organizers (which are present the whole course), so that the students can optimally benefit from experts that are among the leaders in their fields. Debating session: We will debate propositions that have been brought forward by speakers, students or have appeared to be a point of discussion during the course. Costs The registration fee is € 350,- for all participants belonging to the RSEE and co-organizing Dutch research schools (e.g., PE&RC, SENSE). All other participants pay € 500,-. This includes lodging, meals, and the course material at the course venue. A course flyer is available. Further information on the programme can be found on the course webpage of the Research School Ecology & Evolution: http://www.rug.nl/research/ecology-and- evolution/phdcourses/communityecosystemdynamics2018 Pre-registration for the course is now open.
