[All-postdocs] Bioseminar - Lucas Medeiros

[Ana Velez]

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Biology Department Seminar

Thursday, April 17, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Redfield Auditorium

Lucas Medeiros
Postdoctoral Investigator, WHOI

Predicting the Fate of Ecological Communities After Press and Pulse Disturbances
Ecological communities face a myriad of disturbances, some of which are becoming stronger and more frequent under climate change. Chronic impacts such as warming and pollution are known as press disturbances, whereas acute impacts such as wildfires and storms are known as pulse disturbances. Understanding and predicting the outcome of such disturbances has been a challenging task, given the large uncertainty in how a given disturbance can affect the population dynamics of several interacting species. In this talk, I will introduce two theoretical approaches to tackle this challenge and illustrate how we can apply them to empirical data. First, I will discuss the issue of predicting abundance fluctuations after a regime shift triggered by a press disturbance. I will show that, by integrating abundance time series and the press disturbance driver into a nonparametric model, we can reveal how abundances will fluctuate under unseen conditions. I will then show an application of this approach to a planktonic community in a lake that has shifted from a eutrophic to oligotrophic regime. Second, I will address the problem of predicting the amplification of abundances following a pulse disturbance. I will show that we can go beyond simple equilibrium points to measure this amplification under more complicated dynamics, such as population cycles. Overall, this research showcases new ways of merging theory and data to anticipate responses of communities to disturbances.

For questions, please contact:

Ana María Vélez
Administrative Associate
[signature_1005462319]
O: 508.289.2334
E: ana.velez at whoi.edu<mailto:ana.velez at whoi.edu>
She/her

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