Biodiversity Research / Systematic Botany
Welcome to the working group of Prof. Dr. Anja Linstädter
Our research addresses how biodiversity and ecosystem functioning respond to global change, from organisms to landscapes, with a particular focus on grasslands and savannas.
We are especially interested in the joint effects of climate change and land use, and how these interacting pressures shape ecological communities, ecosystem processes and ecosystem resilience.
We combine observational studies across environmental and land-use gradients with large-scale field experiments and controlled greenhouse experiments.
Our research spans several levels of organisation:
- Organisms: We study functional plant ecology, particularly the Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function and its extension towards traits relevant to disturbance-prone dryland ecosystems. We also investigate eco-evolutionary processes such as local adaptation, including through collaboration with molecular biologists.
- Interactions and ecosystems: An emerging focus is organism-mediated ecological coupling: how organisms connect ecological systems through flows of matter, energy, information or other organisms, and how these flows influence ecosystem functioning.
- Landscapes and social-ecological systems: We investigate biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in landscapes shaped by interacting environmental and human pressures. We integrate ecological research with local ecological knowledge and reconstruct past dynamics in collaboration with social scientists, geoarchaeologists, and researchers from related fields.
Understanding these interactions is particularly important in the context of the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Our aim is to understand how biodiversity and ecosystem functioning can contribute to resilient and sustainable ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.
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