Bob Sterner has had an outsized influence on limnology, aquatic sciences, and ecology more broadly. From his early research on consumer resource competition and nutrient regeneration to his classic tome with Elser on ecological stoichiometry, his insightful and creative perspectives have changed the way that we see ecological interactions in lakes, oceans, and indeed all ecosystems, including some that are not even wet! Bob has always been fascinated by phytoplankton and his early work focused on the reciprocal ways that phytoplankton affect herbivores via food quality and that herbivores influence phytoplankton via effects on the availability of nitrogen and phosphorus. That phytoplankton thread has continued to the work he is doing today to understand some of the drivers of increasing cyanobacterial blooms globally, paradoxically even in some of the least productive systems on the planet such as Lake Superior. Ecological stoichiometry has always been at the center of Bob’s work. Through the direct influence of Dave Tilman and Sue Kilham, as well the classic work of AC Redfield and GE Hutchinson, Bob has fundamentally changed our understanding of the role of organisms and stoichiometry in the ecological realm, whether it be via the impacts of stoichiometric food quality or the drivers that force elemental imbalance in ecological interactions and ecosystems. His work on the latter has been particularly relevant to our understanding of ongoing human influences on lakes.

So let’s hang out, talk about stoichiometry, Daphnia, large and small lakes, chemostats, and whatever but especially let’s share some stories about Bob, and celebrate what has been an impactful career!

Lead Organizer: Jim Elser, University of Montana (jim.elser@umontana.edu)

Co-organizers:

Jim Cotner, University of Minnesota (cotne002@umn.edu)

Presentations

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04:00 PM

Bob Sterner: A glimpse behind the scenes and from different perspectives (7930)

Primary Presenter: Jim Elser, University of Montana (jim.elser@umontana.edu)

Many among us know Bob Sterner well from his writings, both from journal articles and the “green book”.  However, much less is generally known about what happened behind the scenes, both within and beyond the lab, to bring this body of work into reality. This talk will gather important global perspectives to report, for the first time, some of the events, musings, activities, inspirations, diversions, and interactions of which I, and others, are aware that have given rise to Bob’s impressive scientific insights. These include innovative laboratory methodologies, rare but impressive field campaigns, and various insightful utterances that are not known to the general scientific community. This talk will also reveal publicly, for the first time, the mystical meaning of the water droplets on the cover of Ecological Stoichiometry. Overall, the talk will seek to delineate the various ways in which Bob Sterner has contributed importantly to the theory, empirical foundation, and humanity of the field of limnology.

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04:15 PM

HOW THE WORLD HAS CHANGED SINCE I STARTED TEACHING (7748)

Primary Presenter: Robert Sterner, University of Minnesota Duluth (stern007@d.umn.edu)

It is an unexpected honor to be recognized by a Tribute Session at this meeting. It’s not something I could ever have envisioned when I attended my first ASLO meeting in 1979. It has been a great ride and I will forever cherish my ASLOvian friends.  I began lecturing as a tenure track faculty member in 1988, and I gave my last lecture as 2023 was coming to a close, a span of 35 years.  The syllabus said the lecture topic was “Global Ecology” so I chose to create a set of figures about how the Earth has changed over my teaching lifetime.  After class I put those figures into a series of posts on X, which then garnered more than 70,000 views and became a story in USA Today.  In this presentation I will share those plots and add some new ones more specifically about changes in freshwater resources.  One big take away from this experience is how important it is for science messaging to appeal to human nature in order for it to have the broad impact that is so needed today.

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