Last week the Centre for Ocean Life was happy to host the "Trait based approaches to Ocean Life" workshop
Last week the Centre for Ocean Life was happy to host the "Trait based approaches to Ocean Life" workshop in the beautiful rooms of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen. Researchers came from all over the world to discuss the challenges and opportunities of the relatively new field of using trait based approaches to understand and predict the dynamics of marine life.
In working groups we discussed a large variety of topics ranging from the evolvability of traits, behavioural traits to key traits, trade-offs, trait databases. The participants presented a variety of different modelling approaches to apply the trait based approach to various marine ecosystems. Insights from comparable approaches in plant ecology showed the similarities and differences between the aquatic and terrestrial realm. The comparably longer history of using trait based models in terrestrial ecology will allow us to circumvent common pitfalls.
Overall we saw a large variety of views and opinions on trait based approaches, and the workshop helped to clarify many theoretical, terminological and practical issues.
A big thanks to all the participants to make the workshop a success in shaping our understanding of trait based approaches, even if some left more confused than before. More pictures of the workshop will soon arrive on the workshop pages.
