Towards a Unified Theory of Whole Ecosystems

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Recently, ecologist have suggested that diversity is in decline (called the Biosiversity Crisis). Perhaps even more alarming is the notion that human impact is likely not just influencing diversity, but more importantly it is likely threatening the structure and functioning of these interacting species. Clearly it is the underlying architecture, not just diversity itself, that maintains the functions necessary for sustaining ecosystems. To understand the implications of biodiversity loss, it is therefore crucial to monitor changes to the underlying ‘biostructure’. This proposal uses a combination of theoretical and empirical research to monitor the adaptive structure of ecosystems in "natural" settings as well as across human-impacted settings. The combined theoretical/empirical approach allows us to document the loss of adaptive structure (empirical) as well the implications of this lost structure for the stability and functioning of ecosystems (theoretical/empirical). Further, the theoretical research proposed here will continue towards unifying results across the ecological hierarchy. This is important as it suggests that there may be very general sets of rules that yield stable, or sustainable, ecosystems in nature. The proposal ends by arguing that this unified research program places us in a position to begin to develop an integrated biomonitoring approach (from behavior to whole ecosystem fluxes) that provides us with early warning signals of impending change to the ecosystems we ultimately rely on.