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Plenary Symposium L3

Unifying Community Ecology and Ecosystem Ecology:
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function

14:50 - 17:50, March 22, 2003

Organized by Kachi, N. and Kohyama, T.


Complex interactions among biotic and abiotic components characterize biological communities. Ecosystem function can be understood through cumulative quantification of these interactions. In this sense, there exits no exact boundary between traditional community ecology and ecosystem ecology. This plenary symposium addresses the linkage between community and ecosystem processes performed over various systems. First we will focus on the relationships between species diversity and ecosystem function within a single trophic level and discuss the results from large-scale field experiments. Next we will focus on a plants-herbivores-parasitoid system and an aquatic system and discuss the role of interacting communities with different trophic levels in structuring the changing ecosystems.