Project Details
Projekt
Biodiversity Patterns
Subject Area
Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
Term
from 2016 to 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 202548816
There is considerable debate surrounding the patterns of biodiversity in space and time. Is biodiversity declining at local scales, with potential consequences to ecosystem functioning? How do invasive species alter biodiversity across scales? Researchers at iDiv have made synthetic discoveries and progress on understanding the reasons for variability amongst datasets¿ these discoveries have helped to resolve important debates in biodiversity science. The effects of natural and anthropogenic factors that influence patterns of biodiversity depend on the scale of the study; and using appropriate quantitative tools in biodiversity analyses can resolve discrepancies across studies. We have articulated the need for consistent national and global sampling that is not biased by regions with easy access. Our future research will address appropriate methodology for sampling and analysing biodiversity that will enable us to detect how it changes in space and time. We will use this knowledge to assist the design of national and global biodiversity monitoring. We will harness the power of remote sensing technology to detect changes in functional composition of communities, with consequences for ecosystem services. Our synthetic research of existing studies will examine the responses of multiple groups of communities to common ecological drivers and the patterns of interaction networks across environmental gradients. We will continue our ambitious goal of synthesising global studies of a number of groups of organisms into consistent databases and analyses in order to address long-standing questions in ecology.
DFG Programme
DFG Research Centres
Applicant Institution
Universität Leipzig
Project Heads
Professor Dr. Jonathan Chase; Professorin Dr. Tiffany Marie Knight, until 9/2020; Professor Dr. Ingolf Kühn, until 9/2020; Professorin Dr. Kirsten Küsel, until 9/2020
