Today's Messages

Please join the Great Lakes Center and Biology Department for the seminar "Connectivity as a transferable framework to understand food web function across aquatic ecosystems" presented by Dr. Justin Lesser at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, May 1, in the Science and Mathematics Complex (SAMC) 151. All are welcome.

Research Abstract: Consumers play a fundamental role in transporting energy and nutrients across space; through movements associated with foraging, habitat use, and trophic interactions, organisms integrate spatially separated ecosystems, shaping patterns of energy flow and food web function across multiple scales. This seminar proposes a research program that leverages cross-habitat connectivity as a transferable framework to understand food web function across aquatic ecosystems. By integrating approaches from community ecology, spatial analysis, and quantitative modeling, this work demonstrates how concepts developed in one system can be translated to generate predictive understanding in others, particularly in large, spatially complex environments where connectivity is often subtle, ephemeral, and difficult to quantify directly. Together, these perspectives provide a mechanistic foundation for linking organism movement to ecosystem function and for identifying general rules governing food web dynamics across aquatic systems. More broadly, this work highlights how cross-system synthesis can improve our ability to anticipate ecological responses to environmental change, with direct implications for the management and resilience of large lake and coastal ecosystems.