EEB Thursday Seminar Series - The old field rules: the quest to develop generalizable principles about how ecosystems function

Seminar Summary - The presentation will chronicle a journey of long-term research devoted to discovering fundamental principles—rules of life—that explain how animal species’ adaptive evolutionary ecological interactions determine how they control ecosystem functioning. I will discuss how this research journey led to systematic resolution of generalizable principles that explain how ecosystems function. The fundamental lesson is that dedication to long-term theory-informed field research can lead to a coherent predictive understanding of how ecosystems function.