Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting 2014 Special Session May 18-23, Portland, Oregon Metacommunities in the Built Environment
We encourage researchers to submit an abstract to our special session focusing on multi-scale processes that shape biodiversity in built environments. Examples of built environments include, but are not limited to, stormwater detention ponds, created wetlands, and restored riverine habitats. We hope that studies presented in this session will advance our understanding about the temporal and/or spatial nature of the processes that drive biodiversity patterns in built environments, whether the same rules apply in built vs. non-built environments, and explore how studies of metacommunity dynamics in these systems can provide novel contributions to general ecological theory. Our goal is to attract investigators working on this topic from a broad range of aquatic environments and across taxonomic groups. Graduate students are especially encouraged to participate. The session description is below. Abstracts are due by by 23:59 U.S. Central Standard Time on Friday, 7 February 2014, via this link - http://www.sgmeet.com/jasm2014/ Please contact any of us with questions. We look forward to a seeing an interesting set of talks. Regards, Bryan Brown, Virginia Tech [email protected] Christopher Swan, University of Maryland, Baltimore County [email protected] Cayelan Carey, Virginia Tech [email protected] Eric Sokol, Virginia Tech [email protected] Session Description: 062 - Metacommunities in the Built Environment The metacommunity concept has proven to be a broadly applicable framework for creating testable hypotheses linking niche and dispersal dynamics to biodiversity patterns. As managers of built habitats (e.g., retention ponds, urban gardens, city parks, green roofs, etc.) make decisions based on perceived environmental cues, such as biodiversity and related ecosystem services, it is essential that we understand the feedbacks that drive the ecology in the built environment at scales relevant policy makers. The application of metacommunity theory in the built environment provides an opportunity to explore how ecological processes that link management decisions, habitat structure and quality, biodiversity patterns, and ecosystem services scale spatially and/or temporally. Studies presented in this session will contribute to the advancement of our understanding about the temporal and/or spatial nature of the dynamics that drive biodiversity in the built environment, whether the same rules apply in built environments, and explore how studies of metacommunity dynamics in the built environment can provide novel contributions to general ecological theory. This session will also stress the need to study urban and constructed systems as ecosystems in their own rights, rather than simply as an urban syndrome. --- Christopher M. Swan, Ph.D. Graduate Program Director Associate Professor Dept. of Geography & Environmental Systems University of Maryland, Baltimore County 211 Sondheim Hall 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore, MD 21250 USA http://biodiversity.umbc.edu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9763-9630 http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NNfHt5YAAAAJ 1.410.455.3957
