In addition to my talk at the BES annual meeting, Althea Davies from the University of St Andrews and I had organised a session for which we invited keynote speakers on the theme: “Advancing our understanding of long-term ecology”
The Line up:
Maria Dornelas, University of St Andrews, UK: Temporal change in biodiversity change in the Anthropocene
Lizzy Jeffers, University of Oxford, UK: Plant controls on Late Quaternary whole ecosystem structure and function
Will Gosling, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands: Advancing palaeo-fire ecology
Helen Bennion, University College London, UK: Assessing the potential for aquatic plant recolonisation after local extirpation
Alistair Seddon, University of Bergen, Norway: Assessing ecological resilience using long-term ecological data: perspectives and prospects
Sandra Nogué, University of Southampton, UK: Comparative ecology of the Laurel forest pollen rain from Tenerife and La Gomera
Jack Williams, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA: Ecological and Environmental Novelty
I was so excited when I received an email from the British Ecological Society (BES) saying that the abstract submitted with Sandra Nogue (University of Southampton) had been accepted for an oral presentation at the 2018 BES Annual Meeting!
And here I am presenting our review paper in preparation – thank you Sandra for taking this picture and many thanks also to the PollerGEN project for providing the illustration for the slide captured here.
Abstract: Modification of pollen production in response to global change: a review
How pollen abundance and quality impacts human–environment system is a significant focal point in: i) public health, with pollen-born allergies and asthma, ii) ecosystem services with crop pollination and nutrient cycling in nutrient-poor wetlands iii) global change ecology and conservation with reproductive limitation and vegetation regeneration. Atmospheric dispersal and pollinators are key dispersal mechanism currently investigated to quantify and forecast pollen impacts. However, pollen production by plants from natural, semi-natural and urban vegetation can be extremely sensitive to environmental conditions, while being at the same time the ultimate driver of these pollen impacts. Despite this crucial role, it is currently un-clear how pollen production will be modified by global change in the future. As a result, longer-term forecast of pollen impact may be associated with extremely large uncertainty.
As a first step towards addressing this key knowledge gap, we reviewed the environmental factors governing pollen production, in terms of pollen quantity and quality. We focussed on factors directly modifying pollen production, given existing vegetation cover and composition; and therefore excluded factors such as habitat loss. Studies tended to focus on the response of a single, or a small set of species, to a single factor. There appears to be a dearth of research studying pollen response at the vegetation plot or ecosystem level. The principal factors driving pollen production in the species studied were nutrient enrichment, increased atmospheric CO2 levels, changes in UV levels, and climatic factors modifying water availability, seasonality and temperatures. Other factors, including biological interaction such as grazing were extremely under-researched. The studied factors often had effects in opposite directions but the outcome of interaction between factors was rarely quantified. In addition, we found a body of literature that concerned flowering response. However, there was only limited quantitative data linking flowering response to pollen production.
My teaching and research are focussed on understanding how biodiversity and ecosystems respond to environmental change. This understanding is critically important to developing evidence-based policies to conserve biodiversity, protect the environment and maintain ecosystem services in the current context of global change.
Professor Helen Bennion presented some of our NERC Hydroscape research at the joint meeting of the International Paleolimnology Association and the International Association of Limnogeology, Stockholm, Sweden, June 18-21, 2018 (see site).
Underwater Elatine hydropiper lawn, with Elodea. This pictures shows how this rare aquatic plant thrives at the interface between water and soft sediments. Loch Bardowie, Glasgow, 2016.Elatine hydropiper on a clipboard. This pictures shows the green part of the plant to are located at the sediment surface and the green parts that grow buried in sediment. Lochend Loch, Glasgow, 2017
Baird, D., Fairbairn, A., Jenkins, E., Martin, L, Middleton, C., Pearson, J., Asouti, E., Edwards, Y., Kabukcu, C., Mustafaoğlu, G., Nerissa Russell, N., Bar-Yosef, O., Jacobsen, G., Wu, X, Baker, A., Elliott, S. (2018) Agricultural origins on the Anatolian plateau. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
It was exciting to hear that our abstract was accepted for an oral presentation at this conference dedicated to aquatic plants. The research presented attempted to explain the decline in diversity of emergent aquatic plants in the Upper Lough Erne area, Northern Ireland, UK and related change to landscape connectivity. This presentation was supported by NERC through my two postdoc projects, Lake BESS and Hydroscape.
Although only halfway through this one week course, I am already blown away! I signed up to open new opportunities for my datasets and this course on Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is exceeding my expectations. And here again, like on field work, lots of jolly Hydroscape camaraderie with fellow Hydroscape researchers Geoff Phillips, Alan Law and mad tweeter Dr ZP @ZarahPattison
Designing stuctural equation modelling and sharing with others
This course, organised by PR Statistics and delivered by experts Jarret Byrnes and Jon Lefcheck, is taking us through all the basic of SEMs and is designed for us to become independent in implementing SEMs using our own data – or even better to collect data that will make the most of this analytical method.
SEMs allow us to account for the complexity of the natural world when analysing data collected in the field and get to grips with direct and indirect cause to effect relationship among variables.
