Clara Ferreira

Research interests

I am an ecologist with a background in population dynamics and conservation genetics. I am particularly interested in small mammals (orders Rodentia and Eulipotyphla). Connecting animal behaviour to the landscape is my main goal, namely understanding how they move, how they reproduce, and ultimately how they persist, so in the end I can understand how to manage and/or conserve them. Small mammals are also very diverse and a widespread group, that shape their surrounding diversity by both foraging on plants and by being prey to several species. Therefore, understanding their services in the community becomes important to understand the local biodiversity, and to create good practices during management and conservation planning.

My PhD research topic is the "Indirect, tri-trophic effects of fear on biodiversity", and is integrated in the BIOMOVE Research Training Group (DFG-GRK 2118/1). In predator-prey systems many indirect effects of predation have evolved and prey individuals may reduce predation risk by avoiding movement at dangerous times or in dangerous habitats. This in turn creates specific exploitation patterns in prey assemblies, which may affect the local as well as landscape-wide biodiversity of prey. In this project we investigate a tri-trophic interaction of a predator potentially preying on a consumer, a consumer’s resulting movement processes while foraging, and the biodiversity of plant seeds, that are the consumer’s prey. The consumer in this constellation functions both as prey for the predator and as a predator (by foraging) on its own prey, the plant seeds. In a series of experiments we will manipulate the consumer’s landscape of fear (LoF), consisting of levels and spatial distribution of perceived predation risk. We will monitor LoF effects on two cascading variables, the movement processes of the consumer, and the alpha- and beta-diversity of the plant seed community. The project will shed light on movement mediated biodiversity patterns across multiple trophic levels, with consumers as movement process links and as equalizing and stabilizing agents.