“Can we ever produce predictive global scale ecological science and can we do it for not very much money?”
Elizabeth Borer is an Associate Professor with the Department of Ecology at the University of Minnesota, whose research focuses on trophic interactions and resource productivity and how those influence community composition. She has completed extensive research in to examining the mechanisms of coexistence of two parasitoid wasps: Aphystis melinus and Ecarsia perniciosi, which are involved in the control of a citrus pest, California red scale. Studies of these wasps are well documented and given the small scale of the research, the combination provides a great field system for testing quantitative ecological theory in real-time.Borer’s greatest challenge was the fact that their studies were so small scale, prompting the question: “How can predictions [about global scale events] arise from local studies?” That challenge in turn means that things often “fall apart when we try to take the small scale and apply it to large spatial scales,” she said.
As a possible solution, Borer and a small team of fellow scientists came up with the idea for a Nutrient Network, or NutNet, which now “has gone viral” and works “outside the tool box we currently use with experts running the distributed experiments.”
Watch Dr. Borer’s plenary presentation, Emergent properties of cooperative science: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
By Danielle Stevens (LNO)