Friends and colleagues,

We write to announce a session at the 2012 Ocean Sciences meeting in
Salt Lake City, “Biodiversity, Biogeochemistry and Ecology: Establishing
Linkages Between Molecular Diversity and Ecosystem Functioning” (Session
137). Many of you are involved in this cross-disciplinary research and
this session also follows from the OCB workshop on the Molecular Biology
of Biogeochemistry. Please consider submitting an abstract (7 October
deadline) to this program.

http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2012/

We look forward to seeing you in Salt Lake City!

Zackary Johnson (zij@duke.edu)
Maureen Coleman (mlcoleman@uchicago.edu)

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137: Biodiversity, Biogeochemistry and Ecology: Establishing Linkages
Between Molecular Diversity and Ecosystem Functioning

Organizers: Zackary Johnson, Duke University, zij@duke.edu; Maureen
Coleman, University of Chicago, mlcoleman@uchicago.edu

With molecular, taxonomic, ecological and biogeochemical aspects, the
term “biodiversity” broadly captures the breadth of organisms and their
functioning within ecosystems. Technological advances have lead to
substantial progress in describing the molecular and genomic diversity
of marine organisms and additional progress has been made using
meta-analyses of large geospatially-explicit datasets. More recent
efforts have sought to leverage these advances and link them to
functional ecology (e.g. biogeochemistry) or to conservation and
ecosystem management. Major programs including the Census of Marine
Life, US NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity, the Gordon and Betty Moore
Marine Microbiology Initiative and others have provided alternate
frameworks for characterizing this biodiversity. Further, both
observational and modeling efforts have emphasized the importance of the
linking various metrics of biodiversity and in using data assimilation
and theoretical approaches to characterize marine biodiversity. The goal
of this session is to highlight recent progress and future opportunities
in broadly describing the biodiversity of microbial to macrofaunal
organisms using a variety of approaches at a range of scales. In
particular, we encourage participation across multiple size scales of
organisms and in using novel techniques to provide connections (or
identify disconnects) across scales and different aspects of biodiversity.

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Zackary Johnson
Assistant Professor of Biological Oceanography and Marine Biotechnology
Division of Marine Science and Conservation
Nicholas School of the Environment
Duke University
135 Marine Lab Rd., Beaufort, NC 28516 USA

http://oceanography.ml.duke.edu/johnson
telephone: 1-252-504-7543
fax: 1-252-504-7648