Experiments with protist microcosms: biological dispersal and scaling in ecosystems
Event details
| Date | 19.02.2013 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Andrea Giometto, ECO Dept., EAWAG and ECHO, EPFL |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Protists are eukaryotic microorganisms, mostly unicellular,which belong to several and often distantly related phyla. Protist microcosms are an excellent model system to study fundamental processes of population and community dynamics. We show how microcosm experiments can be performed to test theoretical predictions on the topic of biological dispersal, namely the speed and existence of a wavefront of colonization in reaction-diffusion processes. Additionally, we show how intra-species distributions of body size across a wide range of physical and biological diversity show both characteristic and universal features, with implications on popular allometric laws(e.g., Kleiber's law) and scaling in ecosystems.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- IIE
Contact
- Dr Bettina Schaefli and Prof. Andrea Rinaldo, ECHO