Meeting: SICB 2016 Parasites and Pests in Motion: Biology, Biodiversity and Climate Change, Portland, Oregon, 3-7 January 2016

Dowling College, Oakdale NY

Investigators

Abstract

Environmental changes related to global temperature may accelerate over time and impact where species occur on the earth. As a result, species may become exposed to new enemies, including parasites, pathogens, and predators. Some of these enemies are of particular interest to humans because they occur in large numbers as pests with commercial and ecological impacts. Ecologists have increasingly stressed the importance of predators and parasites in keeping host populations in check and providing other vital services in ecosystems. Thus, understanding how changing climate impacts the relationship between parasites and hosts has broad implications. This research will have direct consequences on issues of national importance, including: medicine (parasites of humans, disease vectors), veterinary science (parasites of pets, livestock), and food safety and biosecurity (parasites, pathogens and pests in agriculture, aquaculture, livestock). With increasingly numerous reports of plants and animals appearing in new places, it is timely to examine their potential impacts in those places. This symposium will provide such an examination. The objective of the symposium is to bring together researchers working on a wide variety of natural enemies to exchange knowledge on how aspects of global change (e.g., warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification, altered precipitation) may alter the distribution and interactions of pests, parasites, and host species. Most previous work has overlooked impacts of global change on interactions between species that have not previously encountered one another. Speakers are diverse in terms of career development (doctoral students to senior researchers) and diversity (women and traditionally underrepresented groups). The symposium will include researchers working on parasites and pests in terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems. An important outcome of this symposium will be an edited volume and a broad, new foundation for accurately modeling and predicting ecological impacts resulting from co-occurring shifts in the distributions of pathogens, parasites, and hosts.