Mathematical View Of Community And Ecosystem Processes

One of the basic questions in ecology is to understand how the ecological communities and ecosystems are organized. It has gained the greater importance because of the growing concern about the conservation of biodiversity and restoration of damaged ecosystems in a changing world. Species interactions and spatio-temporal variability are the key factors influencing ecological processes. Since many problems interconnect across a range of spatial and temporal scales in the natural world (Levin 1992, Maurer 1999), mathematical modelling is one of the fundamental approaches for untangling the complex networks of interactions in a spatially heterogeneous and temporally varying world. Marked advances in community and ecosystem ecology will be achieved by coordinated development of manipulative experiments on community-wide scales and insightful theoretical investigations. The 8th International Congress of Ecology (INTECOL) was held in Seoul with “Ecology in a Changing World” as the main theme. The symposium “Mathematical View of Community and Ecosystem Processes” was organized to review recent progresses in mathematical theories in community and ecosystem ecology. Our attention was particularly paid to the following aspects; empirical models stemmed from observations of aquatic communities; spatial models for explaining mechanisms which promote coexistence of multiple species; models to access ecosystem health and performance focusing on the matter and energy flow; a model to evaluate efforts to conserve populations; and an evolutionary model for describing self-developing processes of food webs. In this article, we summarize the lectures in the symposium and give a brief review of the background and status of the mathematical view in community and ecosystem ecology. Lawton (2000) wrote that four inter-related challenges confronting community ecology in a rapidly changing world would shape up to this millennium. These are (1) whole system manipulations simulating aspects of global change, (2) approaches in some ways to regional processes, (3) greater collaboration of community ecology and ecosystem ecology, and (4) works with laboratory microcosms and controlled environmental facilities, together with mathematical modelling. This seems a common view to ours, although more mathematical viewpoints were emphasized in our symposium. In the following, we concentrate, first on spatial aspects including regional processes, second on long-term temporal issues, and third on ecosystems and physical processes. Finally we will suggest some future directions that have become clear through recent development in this field and discussions in the symposium.