PostDoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics FY2006

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Project Title: "Quantification And Integration Of Resource Use Dynamics Within The Metabolic Theory Of Ecology" This project is awarded under the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biological Informatics Program for 2006. The goals of the project are to (1) determine whether data pertaining to stream biota, populations, and ecosystem processes support the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE), and (2) quantify the MTE resource supply term through the integration of Michaelis-Menten kinetics. These goals will be addressed by (1) running regression models to systematically test predictions of the MTE; (2) assessing whether resource use across multiple ecological scales can be described using a Michaelis-Menten function; and (3) quantifying the scaling exponents of parameters within the Michaelis-Menten equation with respect to body mass and temperature. The MTE is valuable for its ability to disentangle the effects of body mass and temperature when studying complex biological and ecological phenomena. Completion of this project will allow for the isolation of effects attributed to resource use, in addition to body mass and temperature. The broader impact of this project is an improved capacity to predict the effects of global change (both climate and resource supply) and ecological restoration on processes at different scales, from organisms to ecosystems. The Fellow will apply skills obtained through this project to a long-term research program focused on community and ecosystem-level effects of altered temperature, carbon, and nitrogen supply. The training goals are to learn how to use grid and distributed computing to synthesize existing datasets that include information across ecological hierarchies and broad geographic scales. The Fellow will work with Emily Bernhardt at Duke University where she will broaden her current expertise in the fields of ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry to include expertise in the fields of theoretical ecology, macroecology, and ecoinformatics.