Landscape heterogeneity and functional biodiversity (LANDSCAPES)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Catrin Westphal
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: from 2008 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 60945787

Different species experience their environment at different spatial scales, as result of their ecological and life-history traits, and may respond in different ways to the same environmental disturbance (response diversity). One of the major environmental disturbances that species are facing is accelerated habitat loss, which seems to be strongly correlated with biodiversity loss. Habitat loss increases the distance among habitat patches, which in turn decreases the settlement probability of dispersers (i.e., immigrants). Facilitating the exchange of individuals among disconnected habitat patches (i.e., functional connectivity) has been proposed as a strategy to alleviate the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. Functional connectivity of landscapes facilitates the dispersal of species among habitat patches, which influences gene flow, local adaptation, extinction risk, colonization probability, and the opportunity for organisms to move as they cope with environmental change (i.e., metapoluation and metacommunity dynamics). The large-scale and long-term databases generated from the various core and contributing projects conducted within the framework of the Biodiversity Exploratories offer an excellent opportunity for synthesis in the study of the relationships between biodiversity, land use intensity and the functional connectivity of the landscape at different spatio-temporal scales. Using a multi-dimensional approach and spatial-statistical analysis (i.e., graph theory) we will complement the existing research, by adding extra levels of complexity into the analysis, to provide insights into the ecological processes occurring at the community-level and at different spatio-temporal scales. We will use graph-theoretical models to assess the effects of functional connectivity on: (i) functional diversity of communities and the processing driving metacommunity assemblage patterns, (ii) biotic interactions within a metacommunity network, and (iii) the spatio-temporal dynamics of different grassland communities within the three regions of the Biodiversity Exploratories. Our ultimate goal with the proposed research is to generate information on habitat use and dispersal of diverse communities to build functional ecological networks that will facilitate their conservation and management in agricultural landscapes. Understanding the processes that drive the community assemblage in fragmented, managed landscapes can identify the types of patches which should be given conservation priority, and the spatial scale and configuration of habitats needed to maintain functional diversity within grasslands.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories