Date
Abstract
Ecological communities are frequently subject to natural and human-induced additions of species, as species shift their ranges under climate change, invasions occur, and species are re-introduced for conservation. Because species interact in complex networks, the outcomes of gaining new species for ecological communities are difficult to predict. In particular, the addition of new species produces novel interactions and has the potential to modify the interactions between extant species. Due to high uncertainty in how these novel or modified interactions within a community will affect the persistence and abundances of species, practitioners need quantitative methods to help predict potential outcomes of changes to communities. Here, we review existing quantitative methods that predict how ecological communities will respond to the addition of species and demonstrate how these methods can be combined with a structured decision making framework in order to support conservation and management. Thus, we show how ecological models can be used in applied contexts, and how these applied contexts provide underutilized opportunities to validate predictions from ecological network theory.
Presenters
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Katie A. Peterson
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Katie Peterson is a quantitative ecologist focused on how interspecific interactions shape community dynamics to inform conservation and sustainable management. She is also interested in the role of uncertainty in making decisions from ecological models and how this contributes to the value of information in decision science. For her postdoctoral research project at SESYNC, she is working with Associate Professor Laura Dee (University of Colorado, Boulder) and Dr. Kristin Kleisner (Environmental Defense Fund) to examine the repercussions of temperature variability in a multi-species...
Image
Katie A. Peterson
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Katie Peterson is a quantitative ecologist focused on how interspecific interactions shape community dynamics to inform conservation and sustainable management. She is also interested in the role of uncertainty in making decisions from ecological models and how this contributes to the value of information in decision science. For her postdoctoral research project at SESYNC, she is working with Associate Professor Laura Dee (University of Colorado, Boulder) and Dr. Kristin Kleisner (Environmental Defense Fund) to examine the repercussions of temperature variability in a multi-species fishery. This project seeks to determine how variability in temperature is changing the assumed dynamics in the Northeast Shelf Regional Ecosystem in the Atlantic Ocean and how that impacts what is considered sustainable management within that ecosystem. Katie earned her PhD through the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. Prior to that, she obtained a Master of Environmental Science and Management from the Bren School at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and bachelor’s degrees in Marine Biology and Coastal Environmental Science at Louisiana State University. Her background spans theoretical ecology, fisheries management, and environmental physiology. She has also been fortunate to do fieldwork in a variety of ecosystems, including the Great Barrier Reef, wetlands in Southeastern Louisiana, and desert grasslands of central California. In her free time, Katie enjoys getting outdoors for hikes, rock climbing, and anything involving the ocean.
External Links:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LZ2QTMoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
Presenters
Time
3:00 p.m. ET
Location
This is a virtual seminar.
This seminar has been recorded.
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