Biodiversity Research Seminar Series (BRS)
BRS Jake Alexander: CHITTY LECTURE
March 20, 2024, 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Zoom webinar recording:
Passcode: xE=4aryh
Mar 20, 2024
Time: 12 pm-1 pm
DENNIS H. CHITTY LECTURE
Speaker: Dr. Jake Alexander, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
Title: Picking a winner: the processes underlying variation in species' range shifts
Abstract:
Intensifying anthropogenic impacts on the environment are causing a profound redistribution of Earth's biodiversity. Yet there is huge variation in the magnitude and direction of observed range shifts, which ecologists are trying to make sense of with the hope of improving our ability to forecast the biodiversity changes still to come. I will present research spanning scales and approaches from time series of non-native plant assemblages, competition experiments across range edges and resurrection experiments with model species in an attempt to unravel some of the processes contributing to variation in range shifts. This work illustrates how forecasting range changes will require that we piece together direct and indirect effects of environmental changes acting on rates of dispersal, population establishment and local extirpation, as well as the potential for these rates to evolve, reviving fundamental questions about the limits of predictability in ecology.
Host: Graduate students! (organized by Keila, Nocile and Katie)