It’s that time of year again where we let people know which Weecologists are doing what and where at the annual Ecological Society of America meeting! We have an action packed schedule this year.

Sunday:

Workshop 12: Software Carpentry for Ecologists

8am-5pm, 101G Minneapolis Convention Center

Ethan White and former Weecology undergrad Ben Morris will be helping out with a Software Carpentry Workshop. Learn cool tools to improve your scientific computing practices! So go become a computing ninja*

*your mileage may vary.

Monday

OOS 3-8 Evaluating a general theory of macroecology using big data

4pm, 101C Minneapolis Convention Center

Ethan White will be speaking in the NEON organized oral session on “Plugging into NEON” about why testing theories with a lot of data is a good thing. Trust me, when he means a lot of data, he means A LOT of data.

Tuesday

OOS 8-1 Biotic responses to shifting ecological drivers in a desert community

8 am, 101D Minneapolis Convention Center

Morgan Ernest is speaking in the LTER/LTREB organized oral session on “Legacies From Long-Term Ecological Studies: Using The (Recent) Past To Inform Future Research”. As the title suggests, she’ll be talking about how short-term and long-term shifts in ecological drivers can reorganize communities. Oh, and for the Portal Project fans out there, this is a Portal Project talk.

IGN 2: Sharing Makes Science Better

Organized by Sandra Chung and Jacquelyn Gill

8am-10am, M100IB Minneapolis Convention Center

Ben Morris and Ethan White will both be talking in this Ignite Session and how and why to set your data free.

IGN 2-1: Ethan White – Big Data in Ecology

IGN 2-2: Ben Morris – EcoData Retriever – automates the tasks of fetching, cleaning up, and storing available data sets.

COS 20-6: Life-history trade-offs among core and transient species regulate local diversity and community structure

9:50 am, 101D Minneapolis Convention Center

Sarah Supp (now a post-doc at Stony Brook University) will be presenting some of her dissertation work exploring the cool idea that communities are actually composed of groups representing two different syndromes of traits.  She is also helping represent the Portal crew this year!

PS 21-48: How species richness and total abundance constrain the distribution of abundance

Exhibit Hall B, Minneapolis Convention Center

Ken Locey will be presenting a poster on his dissertation work. Ever have a sneaking suspicion that there was something about the species abundance distribution that we didn’t understand? Grab a beer (or other beverage of choice), go see Ken’s poster, and let Ken blow your mind.

Wednesday

COS 55-1: Connecting the environment to a maximum entropy prediction of the species-abundance distribution across continents and taxa

8 am, L100C, Minneapolis Convention Center

Dan McGlinn, current Weecology post-doc, will present on his work on his latest work applying the Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology to species-abundance distributions. If Ethan White’s talk on Monday made you crave more Maximum Entropy Theory, then you can get your fix here.

IGN-10 Constraints in Ecology

Organized by Elita Baldridge and Ethan White

1:30-3:30pm, 101C Minneapolis Convention Center

This Ignite session is organized by Weecology graduate student Elita Baldridge & Ethan White (primarily Elita) and it focused on providing a forum for different perspectives on how studying constraints can give us important insights into ecology. It features some Weecologists (Ernest, Locey, McGlinn), but also a bunch of other really outstanding scientists.

IGN 10-1 Ernest – Why constraint based approaches to ecology?

IGN 10-2 Locey – The feasible set: putting pattern in perspective

IGN 10-3 Rominger – Evolutionary Constraints and information entropy in ecology

IGN 10-4 Kaspari, Kay and Powers – Leibig is dead; long love Leibig

IGN 10-5 Lamanna – Constrains on carbon flux in extreme climates

IGN 10-6 McGlinn – Ecological constraints predict the spatial structure of biodiversity

IGN 10-7 Buckley – Thermal and energetic constraints on biogeography in changing environments

IGN 10-8 Diamond – Physiological constraints and predicting

PS 39-65: Evaluating physiological efficiencies of branching structure in low-intensity tart cherry and high-density apple.

Exhibit Hall B, Minneapolis Convention Center

Zack Brym will be presenting a poster on his dissertation research. Do you think apple and cherry trees are just like other trees (except w/ delicious fruit)? Find out why you’re both right and wrong.

Other events:

Finally, last, but certainly not least, we’d like to give a shout out to former Weecology post-doc Kate Thibault, who is now a scientist at NEON. We would list all of her stuff, but she is involved in so many activities and presentations that she would require her own blog post! We are super proud of her through, so go check out: this, this, this, and she’s a co-author on Ethan’s presentation on Monday!