Ecosystem Modeling (move to U of Birmingham)
Ecosystem Modeling Research


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).
External collaborators
The EcoMods collaborate with:
Dr. Sonia Kéfi (CNRS, Montpellier, France)
Dr. Jan Engler (TU Dresden, Germany)
Dr. Viktoriia Radchuk (Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany)
MSc. André Pinto da Silva (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Prof. Dr. Ana Paula de Moraes (Federal University of ABC, Brazil)
The BLIZ consortium (one of the Bayklif funded consortia)
The sELDIG working group (started as sDiv-funded working group, still ongoing as a virtual group)
Publications
- [ submitted ]
- [ accepted ]
- [ 2023 ]
- [ 2022 ]
- [ 2021 ]
- [ 2020 ]
- [ 2019 ]
- [ 2018 ]
- [ 2017 ]
- [ 2016 ]
- [ 2015 ]
- [ 2014 ]
- [ 2013 ]
- [ 2012 ]
- [ 2011 ]
- [ 2010 ]
- [ 2008 ]
- [ 2006 ]
- [ 2003 ]
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Dryland resilience to aridity is associated with self-organized vegetation patchiness (submitted).
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Formative Integration of Julia Code into the Unity Game Engine:The Use Case of Diving into Aquatic Plant Growth (accepted).
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User-Centered Engineering of an Interactive Land Use Exploration Tool in Workshop on Visualisation in Environmental Sciences (EnvirVis), S. Dutta, K. Feige, K. Rink, D. Zeckzer (reds.) (2023).
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The road to integrate climate change effects on land-use change in regional biodiversity models in People & Nature (2023). accepted
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Potential change in the future spatial distribution of submerged macrophyte species and species richness: the role of today’s lake type and strength of compounded environmental change in Oikos (2023). accepted
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Insights into the relationship between hydraulic safety, hydraulic efficiency and tree structural complexity from terrestrial laser scanning and fractal analysis in Researchsquare (2023). Preprint
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Assessing the agreement between the pneumatic and the flow-centrifuge method for estimating xylem safety in temperate diffuse-porous tree species in Plant Biology (2023). early view
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Addressing controversies in the xylem embolism resistance – vessel diameter relationship in New Phytologist (2023). 238 283–296.
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Scaling up our understanding of tipping points in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2022). 377 20210386.
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Putting vascular epiphytes on the traits map in Journal of Ecology (2022). 110 340–358.
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New proposal of epiphytic Bromeliaceae functional groups to include nebulophytes and shallow tanks in Plants (2022). accepted.
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Hybridisation may aid evolutionary rescue of an endangered east african passerine in Evolutionary Applications (2022). 15 1177–1188.
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Are chromosome number and genome size associated with habit and environmental niche variables? Insights from the Neotropical orchids in Annals of Botany (2022). 130 11–25.
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A simple kit to use computational notebooks for more openness, reproducibility, and productivity in research in PLOS Computational Biology (2022). 18 e1010356.
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Temporal environmental variation imposes differential selection on both genomic and ecological traits in Oikos (2021). 130 1100–1115.
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Propagule pressure and an invasion syndrome determine invasion success in a plant community model in Ecology and Evolution (2021). 11 17106–17116.
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Niche evolution reveals disparate signatures of speciation in the ‘great speciator‘ (White-eyes, Aves: genus Zosterops) in Journal of Biogeography (2021). 48 1981–1993.
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Modeling the long-term dynamics of tropical forests: from leaf traits to whole-tree growth patterns in Ecological Modelling (2021). 460 109735.
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gen3sis: The GENeral Engine for Eco-Evolutionary SImulationS on the origins of biodiversity in Plos Biology (2021). 19 e3001340.
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Evolutionary rescue and community re-assembly contribute to the waiving of extinction debts (2021). submitted.
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Depth diversity gradients of macrophytes: shape, drivers and recent shifts in Ecology and Evolution (2021). 11 13830–13845.
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Dealing with software complexity in individual-based models in Methods in Ecology and Evolution (2021). 12 2324–2333.
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Anthropogenic and environmental drivers shape diversity of non-native plants across the Pacific in Diversity and Distributions (2021). 27 1120–1133.
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Agent-based modeling of the effects of forest dynamics, selective logging, and fragment size on epiphyte communities in Ecology and Evolution (2021). (11) 2937–2951.
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The effect of species extinctions on island biogeographic patterns in Ecological Research (2020). 35 372–381.
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Modeling how community assembly alters the functioning of ecosystems in bioRxiv (2020).
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Mapping human pressures on biodiversity across the planet uncovers anthropogenic threat complexes in People and Nature (2020). 2 380–394.
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Macroecology in the age of big data – where to go from here? in Journal of Biogeography (2020). 47 1–12.
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Integrating the underlying structure of stochasticity into community ecology in Ecology (2020). 101 e02922.
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Disentangling the drivers of local species richness using probabilistic species pools in Journal of Biogeography (2020). (47) 879–889.
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Understanding extinction debts: spatio-temporal scales, mechanisms and a roadmap for future research in Ecography (2019). 42 1973–1990.
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The latitudinal diversity gradient - novel understanding through mechanistic eco-evolutionary models in Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2019). 34 211–223.
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The dimensionality of stability depends on disturbance type in Ecology Letters (2019). 22 674–684.
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Species richness change across spatial scales in Oikos (2019).
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Interactions between ecological, evolutionary, and environmental processes unveil complex dynamics of insular plant diversity in Journal of Biogeography (2019). 46 1582–1597.
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Assessing predicted isolation effects from the general dynamic model of island biogeography with an eco-evolutionary model for plants in Journal of Biogeography (2019). 46 1569–1581.
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A minimal model for the latitudinal diversity gradient suggests a dominant role for ecological limits in The American Naturalist (2019). (194) E122-E133.
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Spatial scaling of extinction rates: theory and data reveal non-linearity, and a major upscaling and downscaling challenge in Global Ecology and Biogeography (2018). 27 2–13.
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Integrating community assembly and biodiversity reveals new dimensions of ecosystem functions: the Community Assembly and the Functioning of Ecosystems (CAFE) approach in Ecology Letters (2018). 21 167–180.
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Oceanic island biogeography through the lens of the general dynamic model: assessment and prospect in Biological Reviews (2017). 92 830–853.
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Mechanistic models in macroecology and biogeography: state-of-art and prospects in Ecography (2017). 40(267-280)
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Karyotype diversity and genome size variation in Neotropical Maxillariinae orchids in Plant Biology (2017). 19 298–308.
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Interactions between ecological, evolutionary, and environmental processes unveil complex dynamics of island biodiversity in bioRxiv (2017). (099978)
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Flagship umbrella species needed for conservation of overlooked biodiversity in Conservation Biology (2017). 31 481–485.
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Effects of time and isolation on plant diversity: testing island biogeography theory with an eco-evolutionary model in bioRxiv (2017). (100289)
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Biodiversity dynamics on islands: explicitly accounting for causality in mechanistic models in Diversity (2017). 9(3)
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Late Quaternary climate change shapes island biodiversity in Nature (2016). 532(7597) 99–102.
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Functional leaf traits of vascular epiphytes: vertical trends within the forest, intra- and interspecific trait variability, and taxonomic signals in Functional Ecology (2016). 30 188–198.
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Delineating probabilistic species pools in ecology and biogeography in Global Ecology and Biogeography (2016). 25 489–501.
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Benchmarking novel approaches for modelling species range dynamics in Global Change Biology (2016). 22(8) 2651–2664.
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Chromosomal evolution in Pleurothallidinae (Orchidaceae: Epidendroideae) with emphasis on the genus Acianthera: chromosome numbers and heterochromatin in Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society (2015). 178 102–120.
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Branchfall as a demographic filter for epiphyte communities: Lessons from a forest floor-based sampling in PloS one (2015). 10 e0128019.
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Biogeographic, climatic and spatial drivers differentially affect α-, β- and γ-diversities on oceanic archipelagos in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences (2014). 281(1784)
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Process, correlation and parameter fitting in species distribution models: a response to Kriticos et al. 2012 in Journal of Biogeography (2013). 40 611–613.
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Impacts of past habitat loss and future climate change on the range dynamics of South African Proteaceae in Diversity and Distributions (2013). 19(4) 363–376.
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Linking ecological niche, community ecology and biogeography: insights from a mechanistic niche model in Journal of Biogeography (2012). 39(12) 2212–2224.
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How to understand species’ niches and range dynamics: a demographic research agenda for biogeography in Journal of Biogeography (2012). 39(12) 2146–2162.
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Correlation and process in species distribution models: bridging a dichotomy in Journal of Biogeography (2012). 39(12) 2119–2131.
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Effects of Harvesting Flowers from Shrubs on the Persistence and Abundance of Wild Shrub Populations at Multiple Spatial Extents in Conservation Biology (2011). 25(1) 73–84.
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The virtual ecologist approach: simulating data and observers in Oikos (2010). 119(4) 622–635.
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Keeping the Cape Lowland archipelago afloat (2010). (Vol. Biodiversity in southern Africa. Volume 3: Implications for landuse and management) 151–179.
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Estimating demographic models for the range dynamics of plant species in Global Ecology and Biogeography (2010). 19(1) 85–97.
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Molecular phylogeny of the neotropical genus Christensonella (Orchidaceae, Maxillariinae): species delimitations and insights into chromosome evolution in Annals of Botany (2008). 102(491-507)
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{Heterochromatin diversity and its co-localization with 5S and 45S rDNA sites in chromosomes of four Maxillaria species (Orchidaceae)} in {Genetics and Molecular Biology} (2006). 29 659–664.
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Atlantic forest fragments in Pernambuco and Alagoas and theirs bromeliads: distribution, composition, richness and conservation (2006). (Vol. Fragments of the Atlantic Forest of Northeast Brazil: Biodiversity, Conservation and the Bromeliads) 101–131.
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Dieta de coruja murucututu (Pulsatrix perspicillata perspicillata Lathan, 1790) no Campus de UFRPE, Recife, PE in VI Congresso de Ecologia do Brasil (2003). (Vol. Volume III) 273–274.