Friday, August 10, 2007: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
B3&4, San Jose McEnery Convention Center
Organizer:
Sam B. St.Clair, University of California Berkeley
Co-organizer:
David Weston, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Moderator:
Sam B. St.Clair, University of California Berkeley
Terrestrial ecosystem function is the result of integrated biotic responses to multiple environmental factors. While control of the biotic response ultimately results from genomic control of the organism’s physiology, multiple levels of biological organization and integration are involved. Significant progress has been made in understanding how biotic and abiotic factors influence biological systems at discrete levels of organization (e.g. cellular, organismal, ecosystem). However, there are knowledge gaps in our understanding of the biological integration that underlies how ecosystems function and change in response to their environment. This organized oral session will examine how measures of cellular function, species fitness and biotic interactions can be linked to mechanistically understand how ecosystem structure and function change in response to perturbations and shifts in resource availability.
To effectively scale across levels of biological organization will require an integration of expertise, experimental design and techniques across the disciplinary boundaries of ecology, physiology and molecular biology. Session presentations and discussion will emphasize experimental design strategies, data analysis and modeling approaches and technological advances that are likely to lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the mechanistic underpinnings of ecological processes. While there is reason to be optimistic that important discoveries can be made by integrating molecular tools into ecological research it is also important to recognize that there are significant technical challenges when attempting to characterize ecosystem complexity at finer mechanistic scales. The session will consider the most formidable challenges and pitfalls when using molecular technologies in ecological studies.
9:50 AM
A molecular analysis of plant response to global climate change in an annual grassland
Stephanie M. Bernard, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
Sam StClair, UC Berkeley;
Sarah Placella, UC Berkeley;
Rohit Salve, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
Eoin L. Brodie, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
Mary K. Firestone, University of California, Berkeley;
Margaret S. Torn, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
David Ackerly, University of California;
Gary L. Andersen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
10:10 AM
16S rRNA microarray analysis of shifts in microbial community composition in response to altered soil moisture and its implications for changes in nutrient cycling
Eoin L. Brodie, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
Stephanie M. Bernard, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
Samuel B. St Clair, Brigham Young University;
Sarah A. Placella, University of California;
Donald J. Herman, University of California, Berkeley;
Rohit Salve, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
Margaret S. Torn, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
David Ackerly, University of California;
Mary K. Firestone, University of California, Berkeley;
Gary L. Andersen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
10:30 AM
Connecting soil microbial N transformations to plant N processing
Mary K. Firestone, University of California, Berkeley;
Sarah A. Placella, University of California;
Stephanie M. Bernard, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;
Donald J Herman, University of California, Berkeley;
Gary L. Andersen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
