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conference materials

Date and Time: 4 June 2015 (0900-1730)

Stable isotopes are increasingly used to address ecological and environmental issues.  They are frequently applied as assimilative tracers to track changes in diet composition, trophic niche and position of consumers, and reveal energy flow and trophic pathways in biological communities.  More importantly, their applications have advanced scientific research on the impacts of environmental changes and anthropogenic stressors on food-web structure and dynamics in ecosystems as well as evolution studies.  Computational mixing models are continually developed to further improve the use and interpretation of isotope data.  This workshop will particularly focus on introducing how stable isotopes can be applied to deal with ecological problems and associated research questions.  It comprises presentations by invited speakers (during the morning session) and a short course that participants will be taught the concepts and use of selected Bayesian isotope mixing models (during the afternoon session).

Morning session (0900-1300)

Venue: Rayson Huang Theatre
Quota: 200

A series of talks will be given by invited speakers with a particular focus on the applications of stable isotopes in both marine and freshwater ecological studies. This session is open for all registered BECoME participants.
Keynote speaker:

• Prof. Stuart Bearhop (University of Exeter, UK)

Other speakers:

• Dr. David Baker (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
• Dr. Danny Lau (Umeå University, Sweden)
• Dr. Matthew Perkins (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
• Dr. Tak-Cheung Wai (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

Afternoon session (1400-1730)

Venue: Rm LG109, K.K. Leung Building
Quota: 35 (first come, first served)

This session aims to introduce the Bayesian isotope mixing models, i.e. SIAR and SIBER (both run in R), for calculating nitrogen and carbon ranges, resource polygons, and diet compositions of consumers. It will start with model presentation and demonstration by instructors, followed by exercising the models by participants with case studies in different environmental settings. Interpretations of model outputs will be emphasised and discussed. This practical session is set at basic level, suitable for participants without prior experience in isotope mixing models and R programming. It will be delivered by Drs. Danny Lau and Matthew Perkins.

Registration for this afternoon session is required.

• Registration deadline: 8 May 2015
• Maximum limit: 35 places, first-come-first-served
• Link to registration