Welcome to the Ecology & Macroecology Group
Our team is dedicated to understanding the dynamic patterns and drivers of biodiversity in the context of global change. We explore how biodiversity responds to environmental change across spatial and temporal scales, using interdisciplinary approaches from macroecology, conservation biogeography, movement ecology, and computational modelling. By combining these methodologies, we aim to enhance our mechanistic understanding of biodiversity processes and improve the predictability of species distributions and community dynamics in a changing world.
While our research predominantly focuses on terrestrial ecosystems, particularly plants and birds, our models and concepts are widely applicable to other ecological systems. Our work not only contributes to fundamental ecological knowledge but also informs practical conservation and biodiversity management strategies.
Our key research areas:
- Global Change and biodiversity: we investigate how climate change, land-use change, and invasive species affect species ranges, community structures, and ecosystem functioning
- Biodiversity modelling: we develop and apply advanced statistical and mechanistic models, including species distribution models (SDMs), individual-based models (IBMs), and spatially explicit population models to project biodiversity patterns
- Automatic monitoring: we leverage innovative technologies like audio detection and image recognition to monitor biodiversity and detect ecological changes in real time
- Movement ecology & animal migration: we explore species movement and dispersal mechanisms, migration phenology and seasonal niches, and resulting variability in species interaction networks
