Wednesday, August 4, 2010: 1:30 PM-5:00 PM
303-304, David L Lawrence Convention Center
OOS 31 - From Microbial to Conservation Biology: Exploring Phylogenetic Beta Diversity as a Theoretical Tool Uniting Disciplines
Beta diversity, which measures how species composition changes across geographic space and/or environmental gradients, has long been considered an important measure for quantifying biodiversity patterns and determining mechanisms that influence these patterns. Further, complementarity, which is essentially a measure of beta diversity, serves as the conceptual basis for systematic reserve design. Recently, beta diversity has been extended to include information on species relatedness (i.e., phylogenetic beta diversity, PBD) in three relatively distinct fields. Ecologists who study macro-organisms have started to quantify phylogenetic relatedness among assemblages to better evaluate how environmental gradients and geographic barriers influence biodiversity patterns (e.g., Graham & Fine. 2008. PBD: linking ecological and evolutionary processes across space in time. Ecol. Letters 12:1265-1277). At the same time, microbial biologists have embraced PBD, since information on relatedness but not species demarcation is readily available from the ribosomal RNA sequences that are typically used in microbial diversity assessment (e.g., Lozupone & Knight. 2005. Unifrac: A new phylogenetic method for comparing microbial communities. Appl Envrionm Microbiol 71:8228-35). Finally, conservation biologists have extended organismal based reserve design algorithms to include phylogenetic information (e.g., Ferrier et al. 2007. Using generalized dissimilarity modelling to analyze and predict patterns of beta diversity in regional biodiversity assessment. Div and Dist, 13: 252-264) in an attempt to conserve both our taxonomic and evolutionary heritage, currently and in the face of climate change. An increasing number of methodological advances and case studies are underway, in each field showing that PBD can provide new insight on mechanisms influencing biodiversity. Nonetheless, there has been limited collaboration, or even cross-citation, among these different fields. To this end we propose to bring together a diverse set of ecologists, microbiologists and conservation biologists to explore phylogenetic beta diversity, its uses, limitations and future potential as a research and conservation tool.
Organizer:Catherine H. Graham, Stony Brook University
Co-organizers:Catherine Lozupone, University of Colorado - Boulder
Daniel Faith, Australian Museum
Moderator:Catherine H. Graham, Stony Brook University
1:30 PMOOS 31-1Modeling the spatial distribution of phylogenies
Hélène Morlon, University of California - Berkeley, Brendan J. M. Bohannan, University of Oregon, Jessica L. Green, University of Oregon, Joshua B. Plotkin, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Matthew Potts, University of California, Berkeley
1:50 PMOOS 31-2Comparing phylogenetic and taxonomic beta diversity in Andean hummingbirds
Juan Parra, Stony Brook University, Catherine Graham, Stony Brook University, Jim McGuire, University of California - Berkeley, Carsten Rahbek, University of Copenhagen
2:10 PMOOS 31-3Inferring community assembly processes from phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic β-diversity
James C. Stegen, University of North Carolina, Allen H. Hurlbert, University of North Carolina
2:30 PMOOS 31-4Exploring bacterial community assemblage patterns in disease vectors using pyrosequencing and phylogenetic analyses
Ryan Thomas Jones, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
2:50 PMOOS 31-5Using phylogenetic β diversity measures to understand the factors structuring microbial diversity over large and fine scales
Catherine Lozupone, University of Colorado, Rob Knight, University of Colorado
3:10 PM Break
3:20 PMOOS 31-6Using beta diversity to study the influence of geographic proximity and habitat type on the composition of marine microbial communities
Donovan H. Parks, Dalhousie University, Robert G. Beiko, Dalhousie University
3:40 PMOOS 31-7Determinants of community structure along climatic gradients: Insights from patterns of phylogenetic β diversity
Jean-Philippe Lessard, University of Tennessee, Michael Krabbe Borregaard, University of Copenhagen, James A. Fordyce, University of Tennessee, Susanne Fritz, University of Copenhagen, Michael D. Weiser, North Carolina State University, Robert Dunn, NCSU, Nathan J. Sanders, University of Tennessee, Carsten Rahbek, University of Copenhagen
4:00 PMOOS 31-8Phylogenetic beta diversity as a tool in biodiversity conservation and monitoring
Daniel Faith, Australian Museum, Simon Ferrier, CSIRO, Dan Rosauer, CSIRO
4:20 PMOOS 31-9Soil bacterial diversity in the Arctic is not fundamentally different from other biomes
Haiyan Chu, Queen's University, Noah Fierer, University of Colorado at Boulder, Christian Lauber, University of Colorado at Boulder, J. Gregory Caporaso, University of Colorado, Rob Knight, University of Colorado, Paul Grogan, Queen's University
4:40 PMOOS 31-10Inferring the shapes of species ranges from distance-decay relationships
Joshua Ladau, Gladstone Institutes, Jessica L. Green, University of Oregon, Katherine S. Pollard, Gladstone Institutes

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