Time: The next frontier in ecology

Ecologists have increasingly recognized the importance of time and time scales in understanding ecological processes and the factors that determine the abundance and diversity of species. Issues ranging from regime shifts in lakes, response to global climate change, explaining regular and irregular outbreaks of insects, understanding widespread synchrony in small mammal cycles or flowering of trees to the dynamics of restoration all require explicit consideration of time scales. Yet, ecological models and theory have typically focused on long time behavior (albeit with some notable exceptions), or possibly on very short term behavior, while ignoring the more ecologically relevant intermediate time scales. At intermediate time scales, density dependence and species interactions can lead to behavior that will be an essential part of dealing with all the issues mentioned above. In this talk I will examine how time can and should be explicitly included in the study of a variety of ecological questions, why this is so important, and explain how this can change views of what regulates populations and produces coexistence on ecologically relevant time scales. I will also focus on how issues of time scales are important when focusing on applied issues ranging from management of renewable resources to biodiversity conservation with a special emphasis on restoration.