Dear colleagues We would like to bring to your attention a special session on aquatic biodiversity entitled: What's the matter of biodiversity? (session 45) at the upcoming ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting at Honolulu, Hawai'i from February 26th to March 3rd, 2017: http://www.sgmeet.com/aslo/honolulu2017/
This is the session's abstract: While biodiversity is getting lost at an unprecedented rate globally, our understanding of the consequences of biodiversity losses is still limited. In particular, species losses at the plant-animal interface may have severe impacts on trophic transfer efficiency and ultimately on food web structure. In this context, diversity may be either in terms of genetic diversity, species diversity, functional group diversity or the diversity in specific organismic traits. Such functional traits can determine an organism's competitive abilities, but also e.g. its dietary value to higher trophic levels. We thus argue that a wide, trait-based perspective on biodiversity is needed that unifies the molecular and organismic levels. This will broaden our understanding of biodiversity and its losses, in particular at the base of aquatic food webs. The aim of this session is to bring together researchers, methods and concepts from marine and freshwater systems and from genetic, biochemical and organismic aspects of biodiversity to gain a holistic view on the impact of diversity alterations on the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. http://www.sgmeet.com/aslo/honolulu2017/sessionschedule.asp?SessionID=045 If this topic appeals to you, we cordially invite you to submit an abstract for this session (# 45) with your registration for the ASLO meeting until October 14th. Further, we would like you to pass this information on to any of your colleagues and students that might be interested in attending the session. If you have any questions about this session, please do not hesitate to contact Patrick ([email protected]) or Mia ([email protected]) via e-mail. Best regards, Patrick Fink & Maria Stockenreiter
