Integrating Environmental, Organismal and Community Complexity into Ocean Global Change Research

Ocean Global Change Biology is a multidisciplinary field with researchers working on systems ranging from the open ocean to coral reefs. The field also integrates a wide range of approaches, including modelling, 'omics, physiology, ecology, and evolution to understand how marine organisms can respond to the complex, mulitidriver changes occurring in the world's oceans.

The Ocean Global Change Biology GRC aims to synthesize new research directions and facilitate synergies across subdisciplines by bringing together a community that uses boundary spanning approaches to understand responses marine organisms, populations, and ecosystems to changing environments. Held in 2014, the inaugural Ocean Global Change Biology GRC emphasized several core themes including the response of organisms to interacting multiple drivers, mechanisms of adaptation and phenotypic plasticity, and progress in modelling and experimental design. The 2022 conference will continue to pursue these goals, and will include sessions on life histories, tropicalization, and environmental variability. Notably, key goals of the 2022 conference are to stimulate discussions on how to integrate the inherent complexity of biology into ocean global change research, by highlighting challenging topics such as life histories, intraspecific diversity, and top-down effects on marine populations.