Developing a predictive science of the Biosphere and more powerful tests of biodiversity theories need to move beyond species richness, data driven approaches, and overly parameterized models to explicitly focus on mechanisms generating diversity via size and trait composition. The rise of scaling based theory and trait-based ecology has led to an increased focus on the distribution and dynamics of traits across broad geographic and climatic gradients and how these distributions influence ecosystem function. In this talk I will present a synthesis of trait-based and metabolic scaling approaches into a framework that we term ‘Trait Driver Theory’ or TDT. It shows that biodiversity response to climate change can be best the shape and dynamics of trait and size distributions can be linked to fundamental drivers of community assembly and how the community will respond to future drivers. I review several theoretical studies and recent empirical studies spanning local and biogeographic gradients using long-term ecological monitoring, ecological experiments, and remote sensing. The talk will cover that TDT provides a baseline for (i) recasting the predictions of ecological theories based on species richness in terms of the shape of trait distributions and (ii) integrating how specific traits, including body size, and functional diversity then ‘scale up’ to influence ecosystem functioning and the dynamics of species assemblages across climate gradients. Further, TDT offers a novel framework to integrate trait, metabolic/allometric, and species-richness-based approaches to better predict functional biogeography and how assemblages of species have and may respond to climate change.
Dr. Enquist is a broadly trained ecologist and botanist whose research program investigates the origin and maintenance of biological diversity and the functioning of the biosphere. He and his collaborators have proposed and advanced, Metabolic Scaling Theory a predictive trait-based framework for biology to scale biological processes across space and time. Applications of this research is used to show how changes in climate then ramifies to influence biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. His lab strives to develop a more integrative, quantitative, and predictive framework for biology, community ecology, and global ecology.
He has published over 300 scientific papers. He is recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Costa Rica, the Ecological Society of America’s Mercer Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and he was named one of Popular Science’s Brilliant 10 young scientists. He has been awarded fellowships for advanced studies at (i) Charles University/ The Center for Theoretical Study in Prague, Czech Republic, (ii) the CNRS in Montpellier, France, and (iii) the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Dr. Enquist was elected a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Dr. Enquist received his PhD (Biology) in 1998 at the University of New Mexico with James H. Brown. After graduating Dr. Enquist was a NSF postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UC Santa Barbara. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He is an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute, an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems.
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.
