Speaker:

Daniel B. Stouffer, Research Group Leader, Department of Evolutionary and Integrative Ecology, the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany

Title:

Conceptual and Theoretical Challenges in the Study of Multi-Species Coexistence

Abstract:

The population dynamics of most ecological communities unfold on temporal scales that cannot be fully studied in the laboratory or field. The generation times of trees, for example, are so long and varied that we may need to wait decades to determine how a whole, interconnected forest community responds to a changing climate. Many researchers thus use models to generate predictions that go beyond the bounds of what is experimentally tractable. To do so, it has become common to follow the "model-paramerisation paradigm". For example, a researcher interested in forest dynamics would not conduct long-term experiments to directly probe whether one tree species is ever competitively excluded by any other(s). Instead, they would use data from shorter-term experiments to estimate the parameters of a presupposed model, and then study whether or not their empirically parameterised model predicts competitive exclusion or coexistence. As powerful as this perspective has proven to be, it routinely hinges on multiple key assumptions that limit its versatility. I will describe recent and ongoing work that challenges these assumptions, while also describing some unexpected hurdles encountered along the way.

Speaker Bio:

Daniel B. Stouffer is a Research Group Leader in the Department of Evolutionary and Integrative Ecology at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany. His group adopts a variety of computational, statistical, and analytical approaches to overcome ecological communities' innate complexity while exploring fundamental biological questions. They work on a variety of topics and systems and are particularly interested in understanding the emergent ecological and evolutionary consequences that arise due to interactions between species.

Before joining the Leibniz Institute, Daniel Stouffer was an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, a Post Doctoral Fellow at Estación Biológica de Doñana, Spain, and the University of Alaska - Anchorage. He received his PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Northwestern University in 2007.

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98364690035

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, networks, and artificial intelligence. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.

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