BIODYNAMICS: Spatio-temporal dynamics of biotic interactions

UNCE/SCI/005

Life scientists need to be able to predict biodiversity and ecosystem alteration under global climate change. However, that is hampered by a lack of understanding of biotic interactions in novel environments or among newly coexisting species. The here proposed project – BIODYNAMICS – will develop an innovative statistical framework to infer biotic interactions of vegetation, improve the capacity to predict global biodiversity patterns, and advance interdisciplinary cooperation between the scientific disciplines of eco-informatics, community ecology, climatology, and palaeo- and neo-ecology.

BIODYNAMICS will develop tools that will allow estimating ecosystem functioning, especially the essential biotic interactions, at spatiotemporal scales spanning from individual plants in local sites to whole continents and from 15 ka to the present. In this way, BIODYNAMICS can improve knowledge about the conservation of ecosystem services, which are crucial for our society.

The scientific intent of the project is to improve the capacity to predict global biodiversity patterns using a new multidisciplinary framework to infer biotic interactions of vegetation, and identify how local-scale biotic interactions scaled up to maintain biodiversity patterns at various spatial scales during the last 15 ka.