#ResponseDiversityNetwork
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theorecol.bsky.social
Anyone who missed our latest #ResponseDiversityNetwork seminar, or enjoyed it so much they want to watch it again, can now view it on our RDN YouTube channel!
(with apologies to JF for getting Zoom record settings wrong & cutting out his handsome visage)
🧪🌍 #complexsystems

youtu.be/UGydgRs1W70?...
March 3, 2025 at 5:05 PM
theorecol.bsky.social
Join us for the #ResponseDiversityNetwork Seminar today at:

14.00 UTC/GMT
15.00 CET
17.00 EAT
19.30 IST
22.00 CST
23.00 JST
04.00 LINT
09.00 EST
06.00 PST
theorecol.bsky.social Mike Fowler @theorecol.bsky.social · Feb 24
Happy to announce that JF Arnoldi (Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, France) will present the next #ResponseDiversityNetwork Seminar, Wednesday 26th Feb 15.00 CET.
"Linear functional ecology: Rethinking species contributions to ecosystem functions"
Zoom link via rb.gy/3pf8dh
Details of the Response Diversity Network seminar, given by JF Arnoldi, including a Zoom link and Abstract: Ecosystem functions describe processes like biomass production, respiration, or nutrient cycling, that can be key to the livelihood of humans and other life forms. These functions are collectively performed by the many species that constitute an ecosystem; trees in a forest, plants in a grassland, or bacterial strains in a microbiome. Here, I will use linear algebra to show that generically, there is a sense in which a rare species can have as much importance as an abundant one. The reason why this claim is not obvious comes from the fact that in functional ecology, under the mass-ratio hypothesis, species contributions should be well predicted by their effect traits and abundance. I will illustrate using soil-microbiome data that this hypothesis has merit, even for complex functions related to nutrient cycling. Yet the mass-ratio hypothesis has an awkward corollary: functions are typically performed by just a few dominant species, so that most of an ecosystem's diversity appears redundant, or even useless. To understand why rare species can be important, one has to take a perturbative approach, looking at the sensitivity of a function to say, added mortality (a pathogen) on a given species. Doing so reveals a completely different picture than the one the mass-ratio hypothesis depicts. Via direct and indirect interactions between them, species can have large impacts on a given function, even if those species are rare or if they do not possess traits that relate to the function. 
February 26, 2025 at 10:41 AM
theorecol.bsky.social
Happy to announce that JF Arnoldi (Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, France) will present the next #ResponseDiversityNetwork Seminar, Wednesday 26th Feb 15.00 CET.
"Linear functional ecology: Rethinking species contributions to ecosystem functions"
Zoom link via rb.gy/3pf8dh
Details of the Response Diversity Network seminar, given by JF Arnoldi, including a Zoom link and Abstract: Ecosystem functions describe processes like biomass production, respiration, or nutrient cycling, that can be key to the livelihood of humans and other life forms. These functions are collectively performed by the many species that constitute an ecosystem; trees in a forest, plants in a grassland, or bacterial strains in a microbiome. Here, I will use linear algebra to show that generically, there is a sense in which a rare species can have as much importance as an abundant one. The reason why this claim is not obvious comes from the fact that in functional ecology, under the mass-ratio hypothesis, species contributions should be well predicted by their effect traits and abundance. I will illustrate using soil-microbiome data that this hypothesis has merit, even for complex functions related to nutrient cycling. Yet the mass-ratio hypothesis has an awkward corollary: functions are typically performed by just a few dominant species, so that most of an ecosystem's diversity appears redundant, or even useless. To understand why rare species can be important, one has to take a perturbative approach, looking at the sensitivity of a function to say, added mortality (a pathogen) on a given species. Doing so reveals a completely different picture than the one the mass-ratio hypothesis depicts. Via direct and indirect interactions between them, species can have large impacts on a given function, even if those species are rare or if they do not possess traits that relate to the function. 
February 24, 2025 at 1:15 PM