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

August 03 - 09, 2013

SYMP 23

Global Change and The Long-Term Fragmentation Experiments

Habitat loss and fragmentation are the primary causes of biodiversity loss. This recognition by ecologists, propelled by spatial ecology theory (including theories of Island Biogeography and Metapopulations), led to the creation of a number of large scale fragmentation experiments. Some of these experiments have been ongoing for one or more decades, leading to rich new insights into responses of populations, communities, and ecosystems to habitat fragmentation. At the same time, aspects of these and several newly established experiments are being re-directed to understand the interaction between fragmentation and other global changes, including climate change, land-use change, and invasion by exotic species. We propose a symposium that synthesizes results from long-term experiments, many that have been running for decades, and looks forward to how fragmentation experiments may be used to address interactions of fragmentation with emerging global changes. The long-term fragmentation experiments represented in this symposium have contributed enormously to our understanding of spatial ecology. Landscape experiments are very challenging to implement as they balance spatial scale, temporal duration, control, and replication. As a result, there are very few such experiments, and this symposium will feature a huge percentage of those that have been done. An important theme across the studies is that focus on long-term responses has been essential. In many cases, the long-term responses have been surprising, and have taken many years to emerge. The experiments were all initially established to investigate fragmentation effects on species richness, and have shown how fragmentation and connectivity can influence the number of species in ecosystems. We now know more about the number and types of species whose dispersal is limited by fragmentation, and how conservation actions such as corridor or matrix management can be used to facilitate dispersal. Each project has done work to investigate processes underlying their fragmentation/diversity pattern. Increasingly, these experiments are addressing the interface between fragmentation and other global changes. Connectivity is the most popular adaptation strategy in a changing climate. The land uses around our fragments are changing in ways that affect the diversity and function of the patches themselves. Fragmentation may facilitate the introduction and spread of invasive species. Our symposium will address how the longest-running experiments have begun to address these additional global changes, and the new innovations being employed in these and new experiments to address interacting global changes.