FOR 2716:  Spatial community ecology in highly dynamic landscapes: from island biogeography to metaecosystems [DynaCom]

• Subject Area: Biology ; Physics
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 379417748

The research unit “Spatial community ecology in highly dynamic landscapes: from island biogeography to metaecosystems [DynaCom, FOR 2716]” is deeply rooted in ecological frameworks asking how spatial processes such as colonization and extinction dynamics determine community composition, biodiversity gradients and their associated ecosystem functions. DynaCom fills an important scientific gap in a rapidly evolving field that has seen major advances in theory but has little coordinated empirical efforts explicitly devoted to disentangle the trait basis of spatial dynamics and its consequences for community organisation. Doing this in a marine-terrestrial interaction zone additionally allows for a generality that can hardly be achieved in stand-alone projects and motivates the coordinated effort of a research unit. In two phases of three years each, we combined a large field experiment involving artificial islands and saltmarsh treatments, the assemblage and analysis of observational data from the East-Frisian land-sea gradients as well as from islands worldwide, and distinct modelling efforts on passive and active dispersal. We now apply for a final synthesis phase that focuses on overarching data synthesis and model integration to generate a multidimensional trait space for spatially structured food-webs (meta-foodwebs, objective O1), extend the trait-based characterization of spatial communities to dynamic landscapes (O2) and to generalize this information to predict spatial patterns in biodiversity and food-web structure in insular systems (O3). The coordination proposal organizes the synergies between the five synthesis projects by organizing workshops, early career support, and data curation.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• A trait-based approach to plant metacommunities (Applicants Blasius, Bernd ;  Kleyer, Michael )
• A trait-based theory of island biogeography (Applicant Brose, Ulrich )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Hillebrand, Helmut )
• Functional island biogeography of vascular plants (Applicant Kreft, Holger )
• Network approach to metacommunities with passive dispersal mediated by ocean flows and wind fields (Applicant Feudel, Ulrike )
• Plant biotic interactions under disturbance in the salt marsh (Applicant Albach, Dirk )
• Spatial and temporal dynamics of microbial communities under environmental perturbation (Applicant Engelen, Bert )
• Synthesis area 1: Spatial community ecology: searching for ecological transitions along gentle landscape gradients (Applicant Balke, Thorsten )
• Synthesis area 2: Multitrophic interactions from local to regional scales (Applicant Scherber, Christoph )
• Synthesis area 3: Comprehensive understanding of processes and functional traits performed by the microbiome and its seasonal and spatial dynamics on ecosystem level (Applicant Gerlach, Gabriele )
• Synthesis area 4: Model integration - a unified trait-based metacommunity framework (Applicant Blasius, Bernd )
• Synthesis area 5: Functional Island Biogeography Across Trophic Levels (Applicants Brose, Ulrich ;  Fritz, Ph.D., Susanne ;  Hof, Christian ;  Kreft, Holger )
• Synthesis of trait-based community dynamics and stability (Applicant Hillebrand, Helmut )
• Towards a dynamic functional macroecology of island birds (Applicant Hof, Christian )
• Trait-based terrestrial consumer metacommunities in space and time (Applicants Scherber, Christoph ;  Scheu, Stefan )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Helmut Hillebrand