Understanding Trait composition Of coastal meta-communities: Processes and Interactions Across organism groups [UTOPIA]

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernd Blasius
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions ; Oceanography
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 578674336

Combining trait-based approaches with metacommunity theory offers a promising framework for understanding how local species interactions and spatial dynamics shape biodiversity across space and time. Yet this “mechanistic Utopia”, where theoretical predictions fully match natural communities, remains elusive, with a persistent mismatch between models and observed reality. The UTOPIA project aims to close this gap by identifying and quantifying the processes that generate unexplained variability in community assembly, thereby bringing spatial ecology closer to its mechanistic ideal. Specifically, we will (1) quantify the mismatch between expected and realized community structure, (2) disentangle the mechanisms underlying this mismatch (e.g., extinction debt, dispersal limitation, mass effects), and (3) investigate these insights within predictive models of biodiversity composition and distribution. As a unifying study system, we selected the Wadden Sea UNESCO World Heritage Site in the southern North Sea because it provides unparalleled biodiversity time series within a highly dynamic metacommunity, making it an ideal natural laboratory for both modeling and empirical analyses. On the modelling side, we will extend established metacommunity frameworks to evaluate the effects and relative contributions of key “mismatch mechanisms” related to transient dynamics, directional advection, and temporal disturbances. On the empirical side, we will analyze more than 450 time series from the Wadden Sea, from unicellular organisms to birds, link these data to species-specific performance curves, and experimentally test model predictions in one focal trophic group. By transforming ecological “noise” into a measurable and interpretable distance metric between predicted and realized communities, UTOPIA will advance fundamental ecological theory, while delivering practical insights for biodiversity conservation and nature restoration.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands
• Partner Organisation: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Britas Klemens Eriksson