Community Ecology Department

The research teams from the Department of Community Ecology seek to understand the mechanisms behind the assembly of ecological communities (past, present, future) subject to environmental constraints, and how the composition of communities affects essential ecosystem functions such as energy transfers and productivity, respiration, photosynthesis, detrital decomposition, as well as the simultaneous realization of these functions. A characteristic of the Department is to bring together focused approaches in microbial, animal and plant ecology, terrestrial and aquatic ecology, population and community ecology, to test or identify general principles across environmental gradients, ecosystem types, successional stages, and trophic levels.