Im Kampf um die globale Artenvielfalt
Christian Hof is the head of the new Chair of Global Change Ecology at the University of Würzburg. There, he researches how climate change and human influences affect species and biodiversity.
Natural habitats are threatened worldwide: agriculture turns diverse nature into monocultures, urban construction destroys meadows and forests, and climate warming drives countless animal and plant species out of their homes. “The poor state of biodiversity has consequences for us humans,” says Professor Christian Hof, head of the new Chair of Global Change Ecology at the Julius Maximilian University (JMU).
“Many ecosystem functions are vital for our survival: fertile soils for food production, intact forests for clean air, and insects for pollination.” Since September 2023, the biologist has been researching in Würzburg how climate change, land use, and other human-made environmental changes affect animal species and biological diversity—and how habitats can be protected.
Tension Between Climate and Nature Conservation
An important goal of Hof’s research is to develop measures that harmonize climate and nature conservation. Today, there are often conflicts between the two, explains the scientist, such as in the generation of renewable energy: “Sustainable electricity generation is an important element in the fight against climate change. However, large-scale projects like wind farms and solar panels are sometimes associated with the destruction of natural habitats, harming local flora and fauna. Therefore, clever solutions are needed—such as using solar panels mounted in ways that allow enough light and space for diverse flora and fauna on the ground.”
Other solutions to this issue are the focus of Hof’s new master’s module “Global Change Biology,” which started in April 2024. “It is important to me to give my students insights into practice,” says the researcher. “Therefore, we organize an excursion to a solar park as part of the module and see on-site what it means to think about climate and nature conservation together. We also invite experts and discuss with them the challenges such projects face in everyday life. For instance, a politician from the European Parliament and the head of a rewilding project at WWF will join us.”
Focus on the Distribution Areas of Plants and Animals
Another focus of Hof’s research is modeling the distribution areas of various animal species. Recently, he studied how climatically favorable areas for reptiles are changing worldwide and how the roughly 6,000 species manage to cope with this change. The result: with advancing climate change, reptile species richness is likely to decrease significantly in most parts of the world. The distribution areas of many snakes, lizards, and turtles would have to shift significantly due to climate change, but whether the species are mobile enough for this is more than questionable.
For his modeling, Hof uses data from climatology, physiology, biogeography, and ecology. “Global Change Ecology is an extremely interdisciplinary research field, where we integrate insights from various scientific disciplines,” he explains. “The causes of climate changes are often closely linked with economic and societal developments. Therefore, we aim to increasingly collaborate with the economic, humanities, and social sciences in the future.”
International Research Experience
Since the beginning of his academic career, Hof has been fascinated by this broad perspective—he wrote his diploma thesis in 2006 on the “Macroecology of European Freshwater Fauna” at Philipps-University Marburg. He then worked as a doctoral candidate at the Copenhagen Center for Macroecology and in the “Biodiversity and Global Change Lab” at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. In 2010, he earned his doctorate with his dissertation on “Species Distributions and Climate Change: Current Patterns and Future Scenarios for Biodiversity.”
He then worked as a postdoc at the Senckenberg Research Center for Biodiversity and Climate in Frankfurt until 2018 and then moved to the Technical University of Munich, where he worked as a junior research group leader and TUM Junior Fellow until September 2023.
Kontakt
Prof. Dr. Christian Hof, Head of the Chair of Global Change Ecology, Tel.: +49 931 31-87965, christian.hof@uni-wuerzburg.de
