Frederic Guichard - Meta-Ecosystem Dynamics: Understanding Ecosystems Through the Transformation and Movement of Matter

The rapid pace and development of new methods and techniques in mathematics and in biology and medicine creates a natural demand for up-to-date, readable, possibly short lecture notes covering the breadth and depth of mathematical modelling, mathematical analysis and numerical computations in the life sciences, at a high scientific level.

The volumes in this series are written in a style accessible to graduate students. Besides monographs, we envision the series to also provide an outlet for material less formally presented and more anticipatory of future needs due to novel and exciting biomedical applications and mathematical methodologies.

The topics in LMML range from the molecular level through the organismal to the population level, e.g. gene sequencing, protein dynamics, cell biology, developmental biology, genetic and neural networks, organogenesis, tissue mechanics, bioengineering and hemodynamics, infectious diseases, mathematical epidemiology and population dynamics.

Mathematical methods include dynamical systems, partial differential equations, optimal control, statistical mechanics and stochastics, numerical analysis, scientific computing and machine learning, combinatorics, algebra, topology and geometry, etc., which are indispensable for a deeper understanding of biological and medical problems.

Wherever feasible, numerical codes must be made accessible.

Founding Editors:

Michael C. Mackey, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

Angela Stevens, University of Mnster, Mnster, Germany

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10049

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Over the last 15 years, theories integrating ecosystem and spatial dynamics have quickly coalesced into meta-ecosystem theories. Ecosystem dynamics, going back to the work of Odum [135], refers to the cycling of matter and energy across ecological compartments through processes such as consumption and recycling. Spatial dynamics established its ecological roots with island biogeography and metapopulation theories, and focuses on scaling up local ecological processes through the limited movement of individuals and matter. This book presents current meta-ecosystem models and their derivation from classic ecosystem and metapopulation theories. We show how the interaction between the cycling and movement of matter is a ubiquitous property of natural ecosystems and has far reaching implications for the coexistence of species, ecosystem productivity, and their response to stresses and environmental change. Specifically, we review recent modelling efforts that have emphasized the role of nonlinear dynamics on spatial and food web networks, and cast their implications within the context of spatial synchrony and ecological stoichiometry. We finally suggest that these recent advances naturally lead to a generalization of meta-ecosystem theories to spatial fluxes of matter that have both trophic and non-trophic impact on species. Such integration brings together areas of research, such as behaviour, chemical ecology, food web theories, and landscape ecology, that have rarely overlapped in the past.