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

August 03 - 09, 2013

SS 17

Ecological Theory in Microbial Ecology

There is an increasing recognition that roles micro-organisms play in ecosystems is important in preserving and enhancing the earth’s lift-supporting systems. However, the mechanistic understandings of microbial-communities are still lacking, especially for their population dynamics, spatial distribution, diversity maintenance mechanisms, and so on. These issues have long been studied in macro-ecology by conceptual and mathematical models, computational simulations and other advanced data analysis methods. It would be interesting to investigate whether the ecological theories obtained based on macro-organisms are universal in microbial-world or not. In this way, we propose to organize a special section in 2013 ESA annual conference by inviting ecologists to discuss the following topics: 1) the effectiveness of ecological theories obtained from macro-ecology in microbial world; 2) the advantages of using microbial community to test ecological theories; 3) the reasons for the possible ineffectiveness of ecological theories obtained from microbial-ecology in macro-ecology; and 4) how these understandings inspire the future studies in both macro- and micro-ecology. This session will help to promoting theory exchanges between macro- and micro-ecology. Conversations between session speakers and attendees will be highly encouraged.