This year’s very successful annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (CSEE) was organized in Guelph (18-21 July 2018) by HN member AndrewMacDougall, and included a symposium titled ‘Trophic interactions in the changing North’ chaired by James Speed and Jean-Pierre Tremblay. The symposium addressed how changing abiotic conditions and shifting species distributions alter trophic interactions and ecosystem dynamics in the North, and it included presentations by Isabel Barrio (Agricultural University of Iceland), Carissa Brown (MUN), Anne Loison (Université Savoie Mont Blanc, Chambéry France), Rolf Peterson (Michigan Tech), James Speed (NTNU), Jean-Pierre Tremblay (Université Laval) and Katariina Vuorinen (NTNU). We also had a lovely HN lunch get-together, discussing some science while enjoying the sun!
The abstract of the symposium:
Northern ecosystems are experiencing great change. Climatic warming alters the intensity of abiotic limitation factors, while the northward migration of species changes biotic interactions. Together these changes affect the balance of top-down and bottom-up regulating forces in boreal and Arctic ecosystems. This symposium addresses how changing abiotic conditions and shifting species distributions alter trophic interactions and ecosystem dynamics in the north. Community ecology, network ecology and biogeographical approaches to studying trophic interactions will be united and talks will cover trophic levels from producers,to herbivores and carnivores as well as soil ecology. The symposium will therefore provide a holistic venue for synthesizing understanding the regulation of northern ecosystem dynamics and communities in a period of intense environmental change.