Hi Everyone,

Here are the readings and discussion topics for the March 1 Discussion. Please look these over carefully before we meet. If you have any questions, please visit my office hours, Tuesday 11-1 EST.  IMPORTANT:  I will
need one volunteer for next week to summarize the week’s discussion into a 1-2
page synopsis.  If you wish to volunteer,
please email me.

I.  Please read the following papers, all in the General
Readings folder:
Hector & Loreau 2001, Tiunov & Schue 2005, Hodgson et al.
2002, Fargione et al. 2007

II. Before you come to discussion, be sure that you do the
following:

1) Make sure that you can get into the chat room!!!! If you
cannot, please send me an email by Wednesday at the LATEST!

2) Be sure that you can define and distinguish between
sampling effect, the selection effect, niche differentiation, facilitation, and
complementarity.

3) Write at least two questions from the readings (this week
or last week) that you’d like to discuss.

4) Read over the questions below and try to answer them.

5) Think about what people have proposed as projects on the
discussion board and whether you would want to work on one of those
projects.  If you have questions, feel
free to post a question or comment. 
Also, feel free to post your own idea!

III. Questions:

1) How do the approaches in Hector & Loreau, Tiunov
& Schue, and Hodgson et al. differ from the approach that Klein et al
used?  (Experimental vs. Post-hoc
classification)

2) What are the limitations of the Klein et al. approach in
terms of distinguishing between the selection effect, niche differentiation,
and facilitation?  What do we learn from
this approach that we cannot test experimentally?

3) Regarding the VanBael et al. manuscript: how could the
approach of Klein et al. be used to investigate the mechanism behind the
positive relationship between bird richness and % reduction in arthropods?
Would you be interested in doing this?

4) How might spatial scale or time scale affect the mechanisms
driving positive relationships behind biodiversity and ecosystem services such
as pollination, disease control, pest control, decomposition?  Think of the Fargione et al. 2007, and think
back to Zhu et al. 2001 (Plant disease reading, week 2).  Are there papers that discuss mechanisms at
plot, field, and landscape scales for any of these papers?

5) Is the approach of Hector & Loreau suitable for the
VanBael et al. data? 

6) How does determining mechanism for an experimental result
differ from determining mechanism using a meta-analysis (remember Cardinale et
al. 2006)?

7)  How would we use a
meta-analysis to examine mechanism for a particular ecosystem service?

 
IV. By the end of next week’s discussion we should:

1)  Understand the
different mechanism proposed as underlying biodiversity and ecosystem services
relationships.

2) Understand the differences between determining mechanism
using an experimental approach vs. examining one data set vs. using multiple
data sets (meta-analysis).

3)  Develop 1-2
potential project topics that we think we’ll have sufficient data to time to
examine.

Please check the discussion board at least every other day
and discuss often!  We need to select our
project and have a timeline organized by the end of our discussion on March 8.

Thanks!

Stacy