Download You are warmly invited to the 3rd Edinburgh Ecology Network

You are warmly invited to the 3rd Edinburgh Ecology Network Symposium to be held on Monday
29th Feb in the Fletcher Building at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
The Edinburgh Ecology Network symposium showcases ecological research in its broadest sense
from institutes across Edinburgh. All are most welcome to attend!
The talks for the EdEN symposium will be in the main Lecture Theatre. Lunch (from 13-14:00) and
coffee break (from 15:20-15:50) will both be provided in the Fletcher Building (no cost to you!).
If you enter by the main science entrance of the RBGE, at 20a Inverleith Row, the reception will be
able to direct you to the main Lecture Theatre.
If you intend to come please simply register on the following link as soon as possible as we will place
the catering order soon.
An outline programme for the day is:
Monday, 29th February
Fletcher Building, RBGE 12:00-17:00
12:00-12:30 Dan Chapman (CEH)
Understanding biological invasion from ecological modelling
12:30-13:00 Sally Eaton, Nora Villami-Buenrostro, Sophie Flack
LUNCH
14:00-14:30 Graham Stone (IEB)
Urban pollinators: how important are they and how can we help them?
14:30-14:50 Josh Moatt, Richard Whittet
COFFEE
14:50-15:20 Mat Williams (SGS)
The decadal state of the terrestrial carbon cycle
15:50-16:10 Sarah Heath, Pedro Miranda
16:10-16:40 Katy Hayden (RBGE)
Evolution, ecology, and forest management in the face of emergent diseases
The John Muir Lecture
The Fletcher Building, RBGE 17:00-18:00
Getting serious about a top-down view of community assembly
Prof. Brian McGill, University of Maine
Abstract: The standard approach in ecology is to build systems up from their component parts. Thus
individuals build populations, populations build communities, etc. This is such a standard paradigm it
is found in most biology and ecology textbooks. Yet this approach has proven extremely challenging,
leading to John Lawton's notorious quote that "Community ecology is a mess." In my talk I conduct a
thought experiment about reversing the direction of causality and building a model of community
assembly starting from continental-scale dynamics working down through regional pools to
communities. I present results in the areas of controls of geographic range boundaries, functional
traits, and theoretical models of community assembly along the way. To conclude, I briefly apply this
framework to ask how we would predict global change is affecting community structure.
FOLLOWED BY DRINKS