PARENT SESSION
Symposium #33: The ecology and evolution of coupled energy and material flows: integration of multiple scales and multiple biota.
Organized by: JD Schade, T Markow, and S Hobbie
Friday, August 9. 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Crystal Ballroom, TCC.
The Reiners road map: where we've been, where we're going in the search for a complementary stoichiometric paradigm.
Elser, Jim*,1, Sterner, Bob2, 1 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ2 University of Minnesota, St. Paul
ABSTRACT- In 1986 Bill Reiners presented a vision of how a stoichiometric perspective might improve our understanding of ecological systems by considering the elemental composition of living things and how this relates to their evolution, ecological interactions, and environmental impacts. This road map, articulated in the formal terms of mathematics (axioms, theorems), provided some preliminary guideposts to aid workers entering this terra incognito. In this paper we will revisit Reiners' epistemological road map to review recent work that has clarified the lay of the land in key areas, including the relative roles of "protoplasmic" and structural aspects of organisms to stoichiometric effects, the interactions between stoichiometry and macro- and microevolution, and the impact of various types of limiting resources in food webs. Speculations about future directions, such as application to our understanding of global change and to capitalizing on the genomics revolution, will also be entertained.
KEY WORDS: stoichiometry, evolution, nutrient limitation, food webs