Marine Ecosystem Engineers in a Changing World: Establishing Links Across Systems - A Symposium of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Seattle, WA, January 2010

生态系统工程师是通过创造物理结构或改变周围物质（如水）的流动来创造独特栖息地的生物。生态系统工程师在海洋环境中尤其多样化和重要，包括珊瑚、牡蛎、造管和挖洞蠕虫、海草、红树林和大型藻类等生物。这些生物改变自己的外部条件，并为其他生物创造栖息地。一些入侵的海洋物种是熟练的生态系统工程师，凭借他们的工程能力，他们很容易适应新的环境。其他本土物种，长期以来被认为是生态系统工程师，尽管它们具有工程能力，但数量正在下降，显然缺乏应对不断变化的环境所带来的压力的弹性。需要跨系统的比较，以充分了解生理/建筑特征和形成生态系统工程的生物-环境相互作用。为此，综合与比较生物学学会为2010年1月在华盛顿西雅图举行的年度会议组织了一次题为“变化世界中的海洋生态系统工程师：跨系统建立联系”的研讨会。组织者的目标是：(i)建立生物成为生态系统工程师的生理、化学和物理过程的共性；（ii）就人类活动和气候变化如何影响生态系统工程师达成共识；（iii）就如何利用这一认识向保护生物学家和资源管理者通报受威胁或入侵的生态系统工程师展开讨论。据我们所知，还没有其他研讨会讨论过跨系统的这一系列问题。从本科生到高级博士研究生的实习学生将在研讨会上有充分的代表。

Ecosystem engineers are organisms that produce unique habitats by creating physical structure or by altering the flow of materials, such as water, around them. Ecosystem engineers are particularly diverse and important in marine environments, and include organisms such as corals, oysters, tube-building and burrowing worms, seagrasses, mangroves, and macroalgae. These organisms modify their own external conditions, and create habitats for other organisms. Some invasive marine species are adept ecosystem engineers and readily adapt to their new environments by virtue of their engineering capabilities. Other native species, long recognized as ecosystem engineers, are declining despite their engineering capacities, apparently lacking the resilience to cope with stresses imposed by changing environments. Comparisons across systems are needed to fully understand the physiological/architectural characteristics and organism-environment interactions that shape ecosystem engineering. To this end, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology has organized a symposium entitled "Marine Ecosystem Engineers in a Changing World: Establishing Links Across Systems" for its annual meeting in Seattle, Washington in January 2010. The organizers' goals are to: (i) establish commonalities in the physiological, chemical, and physical processes that allow organisms to become ecosystem engineers, (ii) develop a consensus about how human activities and climate change influence ecosystem engineers, and (iii) begin a discussion about how to use this understanding to inform conservation biologists and resource managers about threatened or invasive ecosystem engineers. To our knowledge, no other symposium has ever addressed this range of issues comparatively across systems. Students-in-training from undergraduates through advanced Ph.D. candidates will be well-represented at the symposium.