BIOCOMPLEXITY-- INCUBATION ACTIVITY: A Synthetic Approach to Phytotelmata Communities

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

0083617 Miller Recent developments in community ecology reflect a shift from equilibrium, niche-based concepts to a more expansive view that incorporates species interactions, non-equilibrium dynamics, migration, and evolutionary history. This creates a much more complex perspective of the forces determining patterns of species abundance and distribution in communities: dealing with the complexity itself has become a major hurdle in conceptual and experimental community ecology. This project is designed to organize a group of ecologists, evolutionary biologists, mathematical modelers, and systematists to conduct a comparative observational and experimental study of the metazoan community inhabiting leaves of the pitcher plant Sarracenia purpurea. This community is remarkably consistent and widespread across North America and provides a model microcosm for experimental studies. Project activities will bring together a working group of scientists to plan a set of coordinated field studies to investigate this community, to collect pilot data from these studies, to develop macroecological hypotheses that can be tested with these data, and to formalize models of community structure based on these data. The long-term goal is the development and execution of a comprehensive set of field experiments and phylogenetic studies of ecological and evolutionary determinants of community structure from local to continental scales.