Spatial and temporal community dynamics: Sharing data to answer questions

• Jeff Houlahan
• David J. Currie
• C. Scott Findlay

Abstract
General ecological principles can, by definition, only be derived from studies that span multiple taxa, geographic areas, and time periods. Such a broad research agenda implies data-sharing among many researchers from diverse geographic regions. Many of the technological barriers to data-sharing have been and are being addressed but there still exist many sociological obstacles to data-sharing because researchers are often, understandably, reluctant to share hard-won datasets. We propose to identify the key barriers to data-sharing and provide incentives to overcome these barriers. Once an effective data-sharing model is developed we will build a "pilot" database using multi-species, site and time period datasets contributed by the working group participants. This database will be used to answer fundamental ecological questions such as; Are more diverse communities more stable? Is the diversity-stability relationship scale, taxon or habitat specific? Are natural communities regulated primarily by biotic or abiotic factors? Does the answer to that question depend on the scale, taxa and/or habitats being studies? Do spatial and temporal variability change in some predictable way with scale? This working group is intended to be a pilot project for a large-scale ¿consortium¿ of ecologists sharing multi-species, site, and time period datasets to derive general ecological principles.