EEB welcomes Dr. Andrew McDougall, Associate Professor from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph:
Diversity-function relationships in the anthropocene
Andrew’s research tests how fundamental processes are altered by global scale environmental change with emphasis on plant, insect and freshwater fish communities.
Abstract:
Research suggests that diversity plays a critical stabilizing role against broad-scale human induced environmental change. The scale of this change is now global, relating to factors such as climate, nutrient pollution, and trophic collapse. These changes are predicted to affect many of the world’s fundamental biological processes. Diversity is predicted to buffer the effects of global change by stabilizing ‘services’ or ‘functions’, such as production and invasion resistance, via niche-based ‘trait-complementarity’. Yet the power of these stabilizing forces in human-transformed natural systems is poorly tested and potentially highly context-dependent. The stabilizing potential of diversity may be overstated. My talk will explore these issues, drawing upon research from my lab and with collaborators at a range of spatial resolutions from local to global.
HOST: Aarssen Lab
The EEB Seminars run weekly, on Thursdays, in the EEB Lounge of the BioSciences Complex, Room 4338, from 12:30-1:30pm. Light refreshments are served starting at 12:15.
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