Biodiversity
In truth, biodiversity is not really a single research topic, but rather an overarching theme guiding a large part of my research. In this theme, we develop models and data analysis tools to study patterns biodiversity in various systems.
Current research topics are:
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Resource competition
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Networks on Networks: The interplay of structure and dynamics in spatial ecological network. This is funded as subproject 1 in DFG Research Unit 1748.
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Cell shapes of marine plankton
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Indices of biodiversity
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Optimal control of spatial ecosystems
Bernd Blasius
Professor for Mathematical Modelling
I am interested in the theoretical description of complex living systems at the interface of theoretical ecology and applied mathematics
Publications
A growth-maintenance tradeoff determines nutrient-limited growth in phytoplankton
Phytoplankton encounter a range of light and nutrient conditions in nature and must adjust their internal carbon and nitrogen …
Estimation of functional diversity and species traits from ecological monitoring data
The rampant loss of biodiversity is starting to be recognized as a global crisis rivaling the climate emergency. To address this …
Coexistence patterns and diversity in a trait-based metacommunity on an environmental gradient
The dynamics of trait-based metacommunities have attracted much attention, but not much is known about how dispersal and spatial …
Functional trait dimensions of trophic metacommunities
Metacommunity ecology currently lacks a consistent functional trait perspective across trophic levels. To foster new cross-taxa …
Optimal Planting Distance in a Simple Model of Habitat Restoration With an Allee Effect
Ecological restoration is emerging as an important strategy to improve the recovery of degraded lands and to combat habitat and …
Optimal stock–enhancement of a spatially distributed renewable resource
We study the economic management of a renewable resource, the stock of which is spatially distributed and moves over a discrete or …
Shape matters: the relationship between cell geometry and diversity in phytoplankton
We analyse data on marine unicellular phytoplankton, exhibiting an astounding diversity of cell sizes and shapes. We quantify the …
Modern models of trophic meta-communities
Dispersal and foodweb dynamics have long been studied in separate models. However, over the past decades, it has become abundantly …
Mid-domain effect for food chain length in a colonization-extinction model
The mid-domain effect states that in a spatially bounded domain species richness tends to decrease from the center towards the …
Long-term cyclic persistence in an experimental predator–prey system
Predator–prey cycles rank among the most fundamental concepts in ecology, are predicted by the simplest ecological models and enable, …
Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring
- Global concern about human impact on biological diversity has triggered an intense research agenda on drivers and consequences of …
Unifying ecological stoichiometry and metabolic theory to predict production and trophic transfer in a marine planktonic food web
Two ecological frameworks have been used to explain multitrophic interactions, but rarely in combination: (i) ecological stoichiometry …
A new dimension: Evolutionary food web dynamics in two dimensional trait space
Species within a habitat are not uniformly distributed. However this aspect of community structure, which is fundamental to many …
Emergence of evolutionary cycles in size-structured food webs
The interplay of population dynamics and evolution within ecological communities has been of long-standing interest for ecologists and …
Environmental and trait variability constrain community structure and the biodiversity‐productivity relationship
There is still considerable debate about which mechanisms drive the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF). …
Evolutionary food web models: effects of an additional resource
Many empirical food webs contain multiple resources, which can lead to the emergence of sub-communities—partitions—in a food web that …