Projects

In the Ecosystem Modeling research group, we pursue the understanding of the processes underlying the origin, maintenance and spatiotemporal dynamics of biodiversity across scales, from local to global, and across levels of ecological organization, from individuals, over populations, species, communities, and metacommunities up to biomes. The working group applies a range of methods, including field work, data analyses and macroecology, but focuses on mechanistic simulation modeling.

The developed mechanistic models for virtual life can be used for theory testing, improving empirical sampling designs, understanding complex process interactions, and predicting biodiversity response to drivers and environmental change scenarios.

The working group is in transition phase, as the group leader is now associate professor at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (the position at University of Würzburg was non-tenure track).