CEES Colloquia on Ecology and Evolution Series

PhD students of the Centre for Evolutionary and Ecological Studies (CEES), University of Groningen, organize an ongoing series of lectures on ecological and evolutionary topics, to stimulate scientific interactions between the various research groups of the institute and create an opportunity to invite researchers who are leading in their field from abroad to our university. By combining the lectures with a social gathering and a dinner in town with the lecturer, these lectures may become the social happening of the institute as well!

Each lecture is preceded by a preparatory session where interested Ph.D. students discuss some recent papers that are relevant for the guest's field of research. The lecture and the social happenings afterwards are of course open to all interested colleagues!

The next lecture will be on May 23, 2012

---

Speaker:

Brian McGill, University of Maine, USA

Three unusual views of community assembly

Time:

16.00 h

Location:

Linnaeusborg, room 5172.0571

The lecture will be followed by a "borrel" and a dinner.

---

Abstract

How different species come together to assemble communities is a central question of ecology. What determines how many species are in a community (and which ones are not in the community)? What determines which species are abundant or rare?

Traditional approaches have been very focused on species interactions looking at issues like competitive coexistence and using approaches like the Generalized Lotka Volterra equations or consumer resource models. More recently neutral theory has proposed that communities are just the outcome of local random walk processes. In this talk, I propose three alternative theories: 1) clustered sampling (based on the importance of the regional/metacommunity and the propensity of individuals within a species to be clustered), 2) trait filtering (arguing that assembly occurs at the level of individuals based on their traits rather than their species identity), and 3) climatic determinism through limiting factors (invoking Liebig's law of the limiting applied to climatic determinism). I will conclude with some speculation on whether these 3 disparate views can be synthesized and on the implications for community assembly theory in general.

---

Paper discussion with the speaker

Date & Time:

May 23, 11:00

Location:

Linnaeusborg, room 5172.0880

Suggested reading:

McGill B.J. (2011): Linking biodiversity patterns by autocorrelated random sampling. Am. J. Botany 98: 481-502  [PDF]

---

Registration/Information

If you would like to join for dinner or if you would like more information, please contact Fons van der Plas.