Dispersal and the maintenance of biodiversity, ecosystem functoning, and food web structure in a changing world

(Seminar in English)

How do ecosystems reorganize when the environment changes? This queston remains one of the greatest and most pressing challenges facing ecologists today. When the environment changes, organisms must adapt, move, or atempt to persist in the new conditons. Central to these responses is dispersal. In this talk, I present new theory and empirical tests of role of that dispersal plays in determining how ecosystems respond to environmental change. This research highlights the integral role that dispersal plays in allowing ecological networks to retain their structure and functoning as they disassemble and reassemble as the environment shifs in space through tme. These fndings reinforce the value of landscape connectvity as a strategy for mitgatng the impacts of habitat loss an climate change.

Recent publicatons:
Thompson, P. L., & Gonzalez, A. (2017). Dispersal governs the reorganizaton of ecological networks under en -
vironmental change. Nature Ecology and Evoluton, 1(6), 0162.
Thompson, P. L., Rayfeld, B., & Gonzalez, A. (2017). Loss of habitat and connectvity erodes species diversity,
ecosystem functoning, and stability in metacommunity networks. Ecography, 40(1), 98–108.
Thompson, P. L., & Shurin, J. B. (2012). Regional zooplankton biodiversity provides limited bufering of pond
ecosystems against climate change. Journal of Animal Ecology, 81(1), 251–259.