IGN 14-1
The era of big ecology: The COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database
Thursday, August 14, 2014
313, Sacramento Convention Center
Roberto Salguero-Gomez,
Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Owen Jones, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Yvonne M. Buckley, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Shaun R. Coutts, School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Dalia Conde, Max-Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Fernando Colchero, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Annette Baudisch, Modeling the Evolution of Aging Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Hal Caswell, Biology Dept. MS-34, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA
Miguel Franco, School of Biological Sciences, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom
Jonathan Silvertown, Environment, Earth and Ecosystems, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
James Vaupel, Evolutionary Demography, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
“To say that humanity has been slow to explore the home planet is an understatement” (E.O. Wilson). Fortunately, the last decade has witnessed the emergence of worldwide databases (e.g. GenBank, TRY, BIEN, D3) that allow us to tackle broad ecological questions. We introduce the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database, which contains demographic, biogeographic, and phylogenetic information for ca. 1,000 plant species worldwide. We review some recent findings using COMPADRE, on-going lines of research exploring plant demography in a biogeographic context, and pinpoint promising research questions that can now be answered thanks to the >15,000 matrix population models digitized in COMPADRE.
