Meeting Abstract

S7.8  Thursday, Jan. 6  Leading researchers to water: Assembling multi-disciplinary collective networks for the study of crustacean populations BUHAY, J.E.; USDA jenbuhay@gmail.com

Crustaceans are a globally-distributed faunal group, found across extreme and backyard habitats from the equator to the poles. They are an ideal focal assemblage for assessment on the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance on non-model systems, such as how glacial icemelt or warming equatorial water influences the movements of sea floor communities dominated by decapods, or how the introduction of non-native freshwater zooplankton affects food webs across lake clusters. This symposium is geared toward phylogeography, behavioral ecology, invasion biology, and ecosystem processes, aims to increase participation and collaboration with under-represented groups in the activities of The Crustacean Society and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, and introduces a new upcoming group of scientists, students, and faculty working on exciting population-level research who can come together and direct multi-disciplinary efforts alongside the established senior leadership’s strengths in systematics, phylogenetics, and physiology. The variety of disciplines, study organisms, geographic locations, and aquatic habitats lends nicely to building a systems-level approach for understanding the complexities of organismal resiliency and adaptability across changing environments.