Pattern and process in terrestrial plant communities:
integrating empirical and theoretical approaches.
Miguel Angel de Zavala
Department of Ecology, University of Alcalá, Spain
ma.zavala@uah.es
The development of gradient analyses has been critical for identifying the main environmental gradients that influence plant species distributions. The main challenge, however, remains to understand the mechanisms that govern the structure and dynamics of most plant communities. This session welcomes both theoretical and empirical approximations to plant ecology. Emphasis will be given to process-based models that integrate various levels of biological organization (e.g. from the individual or the population to the community) but more descriptive or experimental studies will also be considered. Methodological issues regarding pattern analyses across scales, individual-based models, cellular automata, stochastic and deterministic analytical models (e.g. ODE and PDE) will also be discussed. Overall the session is intended to provide a forum for bringing together field biologists and theoreticians interested in the development of a predictive and explanatory vegetation science.