On Thursday, October 10 @ 11am ET, join Cary Institute for a virtual scientific seminar by Dr. Benjamin Wong Blonder, University of California, Berkeley.
Community assembly provides the foundation for applications in biodiversity conservation, climate change, invasion ecology, restoration ecology, and synthetic ecology. Predicting and prioritizing community assembly outcomes remains difficult. Blonder addresses this challenge via a mechanism-free LOVE (Learning Outcomes Via Experiments) approach suitable for cases where little data or knowledge exists. LOVE complements existing mechanism-first approaches for community ecology and may help address numerous ecological applied challenges.
Dr. Blonder conducts assembly experiments or 'actions' (random combinations of species additions) and measures abundance outcomes. He then uses modeling to predict arbitrary outcomes of actions or prioritize actions that would yield the most desirable outcomes. By using real-world datasets to assess the proficiency of this approach relative to existing alternatives, he demonstrates its superior predictive skill.
Free and open to all. Registration required via Eventbrite.
