Ecological implications of adaptive behavior
How does adaptive behavior affects the structure and evolution of ecological communities? Behavioral flexibility in organisms has a major impact on both their ability to persist in an environment and their evolutionary development in that environment. Behaviors that affect species interactions are particularly important for predicting the abundance of species within biological communities. Understanding these behaviors can be essential in applied ecology, conservation biology and fisheries management. Other behaviors that act within a species, such as mate choice, can be important in processes such as speciation and density dependent population regulation.
The symposium will address the ways in which behavioral components of interactions can be measured and modeled. It will explore the predictions of models that incorporate adaptive behavior, using problems ranging from the change in ecosystem functioning with global warming to the optimal harvesting of biological resources. It will also highlight the variety of unexplored problems associated with the interactions among behavioral, ecological, and evolutionary processes.
Sponsored by Graduate schools PE&RC, FE, WIMEK/SENSE, and NWO