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Seventh DEB Symposium: Forecasting in a changing world

The DEB2021 Symposium unites an international audience interested in the further development and application of DEB theory in the context of ecosystem-based approaches to managing resources of system earth. DEB theory is a set of coherent assumptions from which mathematical models follow for the study of metabolic organization at the individual level and the interaction with a varying environment.

The DEB symposia are international researcher conferences arranged on a regular basis in different countries, and for the first time in North America in 2021. They are hosted by different nodes of the DEBnet: an international network of experts on Dynamic Energy Budgets.

The theme of the 2021 edition is "Forecasting in a changing world". With an increased awareness of the threats posed by a changing climate and human impacts on the biosphere, numerical modelling is a tool on the rise for scientists, managers, and stakeholders. But the naturally dynamic characteristics of the biological, chemical and physical aspects of our world constitute a challenge that must be considered. DEB theory is rooted in a mechanistic description of the individual metabolic processes, which is crucial to connecting functional traits to predictive variables, therefore, ensuring the adaptability of models to changing conditions. Many applications of DEB theory have already demonstrated this aspect and been used to inform decision making. This symposium will include the latest advances of this field of research and contribute to the emulation of ideas that will help forecasting in a changing world.

This symposium aims at:

• Mixing researchers in biology, mathematics, engineering, chemistry, and physics to solve biological/ecological problems.
• Introducing new challenging problems where mathematical analysis is used for solving ecological questions.
• Stimulating biological research in physics style, using explicit mechanistic assumptions, rather than descriptions and to think about implications of these assumptions for new situations (which were possibly never studied before).
• Creating a platform for lectures who followed a previous DEB course to present results they obtained since then, but orals will not be constrained by this.
• Bringing in fresh ideas into the DEB community by inviting some keynote speakers outside the DEB community.
• Maximizing the broadness of scope of DEB applications via a selection of oral presentations, and offering this to participants of the DEB course by integrating the symposium into the course. The international 6-day school and the 7-week tele-couse are organized directly prior to the symposium.

The Symposium will have four sessions and four keynotes speakers. The number of contributions will be limited to 30 talks and 50 posters.

Please visit this page for abstract submission.