CONF: Indirect Effects of Global Change: From Physiological and Behavioral Mechanisms to Ecological Consequences

Society For Integrative And Comparative Biology, Herndon VA

Investigators

Abstract

To understand how global change increases species vulnerability, much research has focused on how changing conditions directly influence organisms (for example, how their health is impacted by temperature extremes). In addition to those direct effects, global change also shifts how species interact with one another in ecological communities, an indirect consequence that we know much less about. In this symposium at the 2017 meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, leading experts on species interactions will present their research on those indirect consequences of global change while offering perspectives from different biological disciplines (behavior, physiology, ecology), habitats (ocean, land), types of global change (temperature, ocean acidification, noise pollution) and study systems (birds, fish, insects, plants). Our goal is to foster cross-disciplinary insights into the role that species interactions will play in determining what species are at risk under global change, and to promote collaboration among diverse scientists working on this problem. From our discussions we may find that many more species are impacted by climate change that previously thought. Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity. How these changes make species vulnerable to extirpation are the primary focus of much research. Analyses of global change vulnerability have focused mostly on the direct effects of changing abiotic stressors on whole-organism physiological traits. However, species engage in multifaceted interactions within their physical environments, and direct effects of climate change on a species are likely compounded by indirect effects that result from altered interactions with other species, including competitors and predators. This has been designated a "Society-Wide Symposium" by the 2017 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in New Orleans, receiving support from 5 divisions, plus The Crustacean Society. This forward-thinking symposium is designed to synthesize empirical and theoretical analyses of the indirect effects of global change by bringing together a diverse array of researchers, who will present multiple perspectives in terms of habitats (e.g., marine vs. terrestrial), types of anthropogenic change (e.g., temperature, ocean acidification, noise pollution), biological fields (e.g., physiologists, behaviorists, ecologists), and levels of biological organization (e.g., molecules to whole communities). To further increase perspectives and broaden participation and diversity of systems, a complementary speaker and poster sessions will be held on successive days of the conference.