Friday, 08 February 2013 at 11:30am
Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.
Refreshments at 11:15
Speaker: Ethan White, Quantitative Ecology and Macroecology, Utah State University
Title: Testing a General Theory of Macroecology Using Big Data
Abstract:
Macroecology involves characterizing and explaining statistical patterns of
the abundance, distribution, and diversity of species. These patterns can
yield insights into the processes governing the behavior of ecological systems
and allow predictions to be made in the absence of detailed understanding of
the processes structuring an ecosystem. I will discuss research in my lab
testing a general theory of macroecology, the Maximum Entropy Theory of
Ecology, which posits that many macroecological patterns are emergent
statistical phenomena. If this theory is correct, it would mean that the form
of many common patterns in ecology could be unlocked simply by knowing the
total number of individuals and species in a system. To provide the most
general test of the theory possible we compare it to large ecological datasets
containing thousands of sites and species, and millions of individuals.