Understanding Organisms Using Ecological Observatory Networks

B Dantzer; K E Mabry; J R Bernhardt; R M Cox; C D Francis; C K Ghalambor; K L Hoke; S Jha; E Ketterson; N A Levis; K M McCain; G L Patricelli; S H Paull; N Pinter-Wollman; R J Safran; T S Schwartz; H L Throop; L Zaman; L B Martin

doi:10.1093/iob/obad036

Understanding Organisms Using Ecological Observatory Networks

Integr Org Biol. 2023 Sep 25;5(1):obad036. doi: 10.1093/iob/obad036. eCollection 2023.

Authors

B Dantzer^{1

2}, K E Mabry^{2

3}, J R Bernhardt^{3

4}, R M Cox^{5

6}, C D Francis^{6

7}, C K Ghalambor^{7

8}, K L Hoke⁸, S Jha⁹, E Ketterson¹⁰, N A Levis¹⁰, K M McCain¹¹, G L Patricelli¹², S H Paull¹³, N Pinter-Wollman¹⁴, R J Safran¹⁵, T S Schwartz¹⁶, H L Throop¹⁷, L Zaman^{2

18}, L B Martin¹⁹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109,USA.
² Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109,USA.
³ Department of Biology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003,USA.
⁴ Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada.
⁵ Department of Biology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22940,USA.
⁶ Department of Biological Sciences, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407,USA.
⁷ Department of Biology, Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics (CBD), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), N-7491 Trondheim, Norway.
⁸ Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
⁹ Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712,USA.
¹⁰ Department of Biology, Indiana University, 1001 E. Third Street, Bloomington, IN 47405,USA.
¹¹ Global Health and Infectious Disease Research Center, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33612,USA.
¹² Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616,USA.
¹³ Battelle, National Ecological Observatory Network, 1685 38th Street, Boulder, CO 80301, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, 621 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder 80309,USA.
¹⁶ Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
¹⁷ School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
¹⁸ Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
¹⁹ Global Health and Infectious Disease Research Center and Center for Genomics, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33612,USA.

Abstract

Human activities are rapidly changing ecosystems around the world. These changes have widespread implications for the preservation of biodiversity, agricultural productivity, prevalence of zoonotic diseases, and sociopolitical conflict. To understand and improve the predictive capacity for these and other biological phenomena, some scientists are now relying on observatory networks, which are often composed of systems of sensors, teams of field researchers, and databases of abiotic and biotic measurements across multiple temporal and spatial scales. One well-known example is NEON, the US-based National Ecological Observatory Network. Although NEON and similar networks have informed studies of population, community, and ecosystem ecology for years, they have been minimally used by organismal biologists. NEON provides organismal biologists, in particular those interested in NEON's focal taxa, with an unprecedented opportunity to study phenomena such as range expansions, disease epidemics, invasive species colonization, macrophysiology, and other biological processes that fundamentally involve organismal variation. Here, we use NEON as an exemplar of the promise of observatory networks for understanding the causes and consequences of morphological, behavioral, molecular, and physiological variation among individual organisms.