98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

OOS 8

Legacies From Long-Term Ecological Studies: Using The (Recent) Past To Inform Future Research

Long-term ecological studies reveal novel insights into the dynamics of natural communities and ecosystems. They demonstrate the incompleteness or inaccuracies of initial studies and, over time, uncover the sequence of processes and mechanisms that result in complex populations, communities, and ecosystems. The overarching theme of this session is the role that insights derived from long-term ecological research play in defining future questions, altering our long-held beliefs about how natural systems work, and predicting responses to future environmental perturbations. This theme will be illustrated by researchers who work on a variety of systems and study species across a wide range of habitats and biomes. The chosen speakers will present results from two long-term research programs (Long Term Ecological Research and Long Term Research in Environmental Biology), both funded by the National Science Foundation. International participants as well as other ecologists engaged in long-term research are welcomed to the session. Oral presentations will be accompanied by posters highlighting long-term research, in order to accomplish the broad goals we envision for the session. Although we do not yet have commitments from most potential speakers, we have initiated contact s and will continue to work on gaining these commitments over the next two months. Another potential speaker is Johan Ehrlén (Stockholm University): Insights from long-term studies of ecological and evolutionary processes determining dynamics of plant populations. If our pending invitations are turned down by any of the proposed speakers, we have other replacements of similar calibre in mind.