Friday, August 10, 2007 - 8:00 AM

OOS 51-1: A demographic framework for mapping genes to communities

Per Lundberg, Lund University, Tim Coulson, Imperial College, London, Tim G. Benton, University of Leeds, Bruce E. Kendall, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Sasha R. X. Dall, University of Exeter in Cornwall.

How can we link genotypic, phenotypic, individual, population, and community levels of organization so as to illuminate general ecological and evolutionary processes and provide a framework for a quantitative, integrative evolutionary biology? We introduce an evolutionary framework that maps different levels of biological diversity onto one another. We provide (1) an overview of maps linking levels of biological organization and (2) a guideline of how to analyse the complexity of relationships from genes to population growth.

We specify the appropriate levels of biological organization for responses to selection, for opportunities for selection, and for selection itself. We map between them and embed these maps into an ecological setting.