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12.517 G(2) 309 Spring 2000
The theme for Spring 2000 will be Complexity in Ecology.
Fundamental problems in the field of complex systems focus on the importance of interactions and adaptations in a hierarchy of length and time scales. Ecology presents a series of canonical problems in which these features play a prominent role; the relation of biodiversity to ecosystem stability and the impact of environmental fluctuations on speciation and extinction are but two examples.
In this class we will critically examine recent literature in the field by holding twice-weekly roundtable discussions. The emphasis will be on developing quantitative theories in the context of experimental and observational data. No background in ecology will be presumed.
The first meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, February 1st in 54313 at 11:00 am. Unless there are conflicts, we will meet thereafter on Tuesdays and Thursday from 11 am to 12:30 pm.
Contacts: Prof. Daniel Rothman and Joshua Weitz
Continuing discussion: Web forum (password required)
Course overview: [synopsis (pdf)] [synopsis (ps)] [references (bib)]
[course poster (b&w)] [course poster (color)]
List of topics:
Introduction.|
1. How many species are there on Earth? (May, 1988) |
Food webs.
|
1. Introduction to food webs and trophic interactions. (Cohen and Newman, 1985; Pimm et al., 1991) 2. Empirical examples and critiques of the cascade model. (Goldwasser and Roughgarden, 1993; Havens, 1992) 3. Dynamical models of food webs. (Pimm and Lawton, 1977; Post and Pimm, 1983) |
Biodiversity and ecological stability.|
1. What is the relationship between complexity and stability?
(May, 1972; Cohen and Newman, 1985b; Solow et al., 1999 )
2. Evidence from experiments. (Tilman, 1996) 3. Diversity stability relationships: Statistical inevitability or ecological consequence? (Doak, 1998; Tilman, 1998 ) |
Diversity and ecosystem function.|
1. Diversity in terrestial ecosystems.
(Naeem, 1995) 2. Perspectives on biodiversity and ecosystem function. (Grime, 1997; Wardle, 1997 ; Tilman, 1997 ; Hooper, 1997) |
Species-area relationships.|
1. Island biogeography.
(MacArthur and Wilson, 1963) 2. Theoretical foundation: log-normal distributions of species abundance power-law species-area curves. (May, 1975) 3. Spatial models. (Durrett and Levin, 1996) |
Species-energy relationships.|
1. What is the role of resource availability in species-area
relationships?
(Wright, 1983) 2. Empirical tests of species-energy theory (Currie, 1991) 3. Issues of scale (Rosenzweig and Abramsky, 1993, Wright, Currie, and Maurer, 1993) |
Extinctions and home range.| 1. Extinction rates and range contraction of endangered species. ( Lawton, 1995 , Channel and Lomolino, 2000 ) |
The role of body size in ecology|
1. Introduction to body size in the context of evolution and ecology. (LaBarbera, 1989) 2. Allometric constraints, resource equipartioning and body size (Damuth, 1981 ; Enquist et al., 1998) 3. Cope's Rule. ( Alroy, 1998) 4. Home range scaling and statistical artifacts in abundance sampling. ( Lindstedt, 1986 ; Blackburn and Gaston, 1996 ) 5. Evolutionary entropy and body size ( Demetrius, 1997; Demetrius, 2000) |
Student presentations.|
1. Niche webs. 2. Dynamic food webs. 3. Island area and flora. 4. Biodiversity-biomass relationships. 5. Allometric scaling. 6. Dynamic spatial models. 7. Case study: Johnston Atoll. 8. Remote sensing of phytoplankton. |
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References
Alroy, J., 1998, Cope's rule and the dynamics of body mass evolution in North American fossil mammals. Science 280, 731-4.
Blackburn, T.M. and Gaston, K.J., 1996, Abundance-body size relationships: the area you census tells you more. OIKOS 75, 303-9.
Brown, J.H. and Maurer, B.A., 1989, Macroecology: The division of food and space among species on continents. Science 243, 1145-50.
Channel, R. and Lomolino, M.V., 2000 , Dynamic biogeography and conservation of endangered species. Nature 403, 84-6.
Cohen, J.E. and Newman, C.M., 1985, A stochastic theory of community food webs I. Models and aggregated data. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 224, 421-48.
Cohen, J.E. and Newman, C.M., 1985b, When will a large complex system be stable? J. Theor. Biol. 113, 153-6.
Currie, 1991, Energy and large-scale patterns of animal- and plant-species richness. The American Naturalist 137, 27-49.
Damuth, J., 1981, Population density and body size in mammals. Nature 290, 699-700.
Demetrius, L., 1997, Directionality principles in thermodynamics and evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 94, 3491-8.
Demetrius, L., 2000 Directionality theory and the evolution of body size. Unpublished.
Doak, D.F. et al., 1998 The statistical inevitability of stability diversity relationships in community ecology. American Naturalist 151, 264-76.
Durrett, R. and Levin, S., 1996 Spatial models for species-area curves. Journal of Theoretical Biology 179, 119-127.
Enquist, B.J., Brown, J.H. and West, G.B., 1998, Allometric scaling of plant energetics and population density. Nature 395, 163-5.
Goldwasser, L. and Roughgarden, J., 1993, Construction and analysis of a large Caribbean food web. Ecology 74, 1216-33.
Grime, J.P., 1997 Biodiversity and ecosystem function: The debate deepens. Science 277, 1260-1.
Havens, K., 1992, Scale and structure in natural food webs. Science 257, 1107-9.
Hooper, D.U. and Vitousek, P.M., 1997, The effects of plant composition and diversity on ecosystem processes. Science 277, 1302-5.
LaBarbera, M., 1989 , Analyzing body size as a factor in ecology and evolution. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Sys. 20, 97-117.
Lawton, J.H., 1995, Population dynamics principles. in R.H. Lawton and R.M. May, eds., Extinction Rates, University of Oxford Press, pp. 147-63.
Lindstedt, S.L., Miller, B.J. and Buskirk, S.W., Home range, time and body size in mammals. Ecology 67, 413-8.
MacArthur, R.H. and Wilson, E.O., 1963, An equilibrium theory of insular zoogeography. Evolution 17, 373-387.
May, R.M., 1972, Will a large complex system be stable? Nature 238, 413-414.
May, R.M., 1975, Patterns of species abundance and diversity. In M. L. Cody, J. M. Diamond, eds., Ecology and Evolution of Communities, Harvard University Press, pp. 81-120.
May, R.M., 1988, How many species are there on Earth? Science 241, 1441-9. Also available online.
Naeem, S., Thompson, L.J., Lawler, S.P., Lawton, J.H. and Woodfin, R.M. Empirical evidence that declining species diversity may alter the performance of terrestrial ecosystems. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 347, 249-62.
Pimm, S.L., Lawton, J.H., 1977, Number of trophic levels in ecological communities. Nature 268, 329-331.
Pimm, S.L., Lawton, J.H. and Cohen, J.E., 1991, Food web patterns and their consequences. Nature 350, 669-74.
Post, W.M. and Pimm, S.L., 1983, Community assembly and food web stability. Mathematical Biosciences 64, 169-192.
Rosenzweig, M. L. and Abramsky, Z., 1993, How are diversity and productivity related? In R. E. Ricklefs and D. Schluter, eds., Diversity in Ecological Communities, University of Chicago Press, pp. 52-65.
Solow, A.R., Costello, C. and Beet, A., 1999, On an early result on stability and complexity. American Naturalist 154, 587-588.
Tilman, D., 1996, Biodiversity: Population versus ecosystem stability. Ecology 77, 350-363.
Tilman, D., Knops, J., Wedin, D., Reich, P., Ritchie, M. and Siemann, M., 1997, The influence of functional diversity and compsition on ecosystem processes. Science 277, 1300-2.
Tilman, D., Lehman, C.L. and Bristow, C.E., 1998, Diversity stability relationships: Statistical inevitability or ecological consequence? American Naturalist 151, 277-82.
Wright, D.H., 1983, Species-energy theory: an extension of species-area theory. Oikos 41, 4896-506.
Wright, D.H., Currie, D.J. and Maurer, B.A., 1993, Energy supply and patterns of species richness on local and regional scales. In R. E. Ricklefs and D. Schluter, eds., Diversity in Ecological Communities, University of Chicago Press, pp. 66-74.
Wardle, D.A., Zackrisson, O., Hornberg, G. and Gallet, C., 1997, The influence of island area on ecosystem properties. Science 277, 1296-1300.
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