Collaborative Research: Homeostasis, stoichiometry and dynamic energy budgets at multiple levels of biological organization

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Dynamic energy budget (DEB) models describe the rates at which individual organisms assimilate and use energy and essential elements such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. The resulting (DEB) theory offers a powerful theoretical framework for relating suborganismal (biochemical, genetic, and physiological) processes to organismal performance (growth, reproduction, mortality), and thereby to ecological and evolutionary change. This project will explore the consequences at many levels of biological organization of a broad range of biochemical and physiological control mechanisms. There will be parallel efforts at developing new, general theory and on one particular application: the biology of stony corals. In that system, the interactions of a host, its symbionts and both intra-cellular and extracellular microbial communities create a context where traditional distinctions between levels of biological organization fail, and where the time scales of physiological, ecological, and evolutionary processes overlap. This new theory will have wide biological and ecological applicability. Potential users of the new approach include the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) community within the United States who require theory to compare and contrast critical biological processes at many levels of organization, both within and among sites. There are detailed plans for close collaboration with researchers at the Moorea Coral Reef LTER. There are distinctive educational opportunities deriving from the collaboration between researchers at a research university (University of California, Santa Barbara) and a teaching oriented, minority-serving institution (California State University Northridge). These include cooperative efforts in graduate student training, new modules for undergraduate classes, and the direct involvement of minority students in developing new theory and its empirical tests.