99th ESA Annual Meeting (August 10 -- 15, 2014)

SS 6

The Science of Team Science: Effectively Leveraging Ecological Research Networks

To address global issues in modern ecology, researchers are employing a variety of comparative approaches relying on concerted, quantitative efforts to measure changes in ecosystem structure and function. These distributed ecological networks, often featuring diverse collaborations across broad geographic ranges, are gaining popularity in research across systems, yet face many challenges including limited funding and, often, lacking top-down infrastructure. We propose to leverage leadership theory and the interdisciplinary science of team science to identify critical impediments to, and generate potential solutions for, establishing and maintaining effective networks.

With a panel of researchers, social scientists and educators, we will feature a diversity of ecological networks as case studies to explore strategies for enhancing collaborative effectiveness. We will examine how teams connect and collaborate to achieve scientific breakthroughs not attainable by individual or additive efforts. We will focus on the development of team dynamics, management, structure, and policies conducive to research effectiveness and overall productivity. Specifically, we will evaluate key leadership and organizational decisions and strategies beneficial for network initiation and perseverance.

This workshop comprises the third installment in a series of ESA special sessions on ecological networks, the first of which explored the diversity of current research networks (2012) and the second of which documented concerns and issues faced by these organizations (2013 ESA). We present this workshop as an opportunity for networks to learn best practices from each other, and to start an exchange with social scientists concerned with leadership and team science to maximize network potential.