Fernanda Valdovinos, Dept of Environmental Science & Policy, University of California - Davis
Abstract: The Earth is facing its 6th massive extinction of species, devastating effects of climate change, vast habitat loss, species invasions, and overexploitation of our oceans. Interdisciplinary research capable to understand and predict how the various ecosystems on the planet respond to those impacts is now critical to inform local and global actions to adapt to those responses, and to reduce human impacts on ecosystems. In this talk, I will show how mathematical models of ecological networks can help us understand ecosystem responses to environmental changes, including those caused by species invasions, assembly of novel communities, and fisheries. I will present three of my most recent projects, which evaluate: 1) the effect of transient dynamics on plant invasion success in plant-pollinator networks, 2) the effects of network motif assembly and disassembly on the structure and species persistence of novel plant-pollinator networks, and 3) the impacts of bycatch policies and fishers’ heterogeneous information on marine food webs and fishery sustainability. I conclude by emphasizing that interdisciplinary research conducted by teams of theoretical and empirical ecologists, evolutionary biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, oceanographers, economists and other social scientists is needed to address the environmental crisis our world faces.
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