Dear colleagues,
Biology Thursday seminar continues on 15th December, 12:15pm
The meeting will be on zoom:
https://oulu.zoom.us/j/62917763539?pwd=WENZRy9Bb3NlSzlyeVlVamJ4RHR5Zz09
Anu Eskelinen from the University of Oulu will present her research on:
Mechanisms of biodiversity change - insights from plant communities in the Anthropocene
Plant communities and ecosystems around the world are experiencing unprecedented anthropogenic global change pressures, with projections of major changes in plant biodiversity. However, attempts to generalize biodiversity responses to global change pressures have had mixed success because idiosyncratic responses are often observed. Although decreases in plant biodiversity have been shown in response to some global change drivers, many studies report that local communities instead tolerate or resist global changes, show significant turnover of species and even increasing species richness. Moreover, species responses can either lag behind or exceed the velocity of global changes. A key to understanding these heterogeneous biodiversity responses and to target mitigation, conservation, and restoration actions in an appropriate way is to understand mechanisms that act behind biodiversity responses. In my talk I will present results from several recent case studies that investigate mechanisms linked to plant biodiversity change. I will specifically demonstrate that competition for light is a central mechanism driving plant biodiversity loss under nutrient enrichment and loss of herbivory, that nutrient enrichment can weaken the temporal storage effect provided by seed banks as a biodiversity maintaining mechanism, and that dispersal limitation interacts with trophic interactions and nutrients to constrain the invasion of novel species and their effects on diversity and productivity, causing lags in biodiversity response to global changes.
Website: https://eskelinenresearch.com/
Related research:
Eskelinen et al. 2022, Nature Light competition drives herbivore and nutrient effects on plant diversityhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05383-9
The seminars program for this semester can be found here: https://thursdayseminarbiology.wordpress.com/
See you on Thursday!
Noémie
Noémie Pichon Post-doctoral researcher University of Oulu, Finland
noemie.pichon@oulu.fimailto:noemie.pichon@oulu.fi