SP2 Scaling biodiversity: temporal and spatial beta-diversity during forest recovery

• Applicants: Dr. Gunnar Brehm; Professor Dr. Jörg Müller
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 444827997

Species loss at the landscape scale can be caused by a system-wide loss of species, but more commonly, it results from a decrease in dissimilarity between local communities (beta-diversity). As decreasing beta-diversity should contribute to decreasing ecosystem functions and resilience at the Gamma-level understanding beta-diversity is important for conservation ecology. I phase 1 it emerged that understanding the drivers of beta-diversity in space and time is key for the understanding of local animal recovery. Therefore, SP2 is focusing on four objectives around beta diversity: O1: Temporal beta-diversity along the recovery gradient; O2: beta-diversity of the surrounding landscape explaining local assembly; O3: beta-diversity within different succession stages in a small-scale and an intensive large scale agriculture matrix; O4: beta-diversity in different subregions along a gradient of landscape wide land-use intensity. Based on the groundwork on taxonomic knowledge, phylogenies and traits, autonomous sampling techniques, generated and tested for the hyperdiverse region of Canande, as well as advances in statistical methods, realized during phase 1 of Reassembly, SP2 will study 11 temporally replicated species groups and 7 taxa sampled by rapid assessment methods to test in total 7 hypotheses. Furthermore, it aims on the development of an index based on different taxa, rare and dominant species and with focus on different facets of beta-diversity namely taxonomically, functionally and phylogenetically, which will allow all other subprojects to assess the impact of regional species pools for their local studies, the landowner Jocotoco to assess the quality of envisioned land for protection and to be used as a new tool in the field of biodiversity credits.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5207: Reassembly of species interaction networks – Resistance, resilience and functional recovery of a rainforest ecosystem
• International Connection: Ecuador
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Lou Jost; Privatdozent Dr. H. Martin Schaefer; Professor E. Santiago Villamarin-Cortez, Ph.D.