Seminar Details

Species diversity: From individual-level processes to community-level patterns

Date

18/01/2018

Lecturers

Prof. Ronen Kadmon - Dept. of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the observed patterns of species diversity is a major challenge of ecology. This question is apparently very complex because of the multidimensionality of ecological systems, the large number of species and environmental factors, the potential for complex direct and indirect interactions, and the inherent stochasticity of all ecological systems. Surprisingly, in spite of this immense complexity, ecological communities exhibit a large number of 'semi-universal' patterns of species diversity that can be observed over different kinds of organisms and environments. Examples for such patterns are the increase of local species diversity with regional diversity, the increase of species diversity with area and habitat heterogeneity, the decease of species diversity with geographical isolation, and the unimodal responses of species diversity to disturbance and productivity. In this talk, I will present a general theory that we have developed (called the Markovian Community Dynamics Framework) in an attempt to explain all of these patterns.

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