News from the Computational Ecology Lab

The link for the video recording and summary of my talk Modelling the assembly and disassembly of complex ecological systems at the Modeling Talk Series of Google / Alphabet is now live!

In this talk I presented a summary of modelling work we have been conducting at the lab over the last few years in an effort to better understand how complex species interaction networks assemble and how they respond to different perturbations from warming and invasions to habitat loss.

There are also many other interesting talks in the series that are worth checking out!

Today I am visiting the Silwood Park Campus of Imperial College London, where I was invited to present the lab’s research on Ecological networks across scales from micro to macro in a research seminar as part of the Ecology and Evolution Seminar Series at Silwood Park.

I had great interesting discussions with Prof Samraat Pawar, my host over there at Silwood on the modelling of coalescent microbial communities. We discussed interesting ideas related to one of his recent papers on the role of competition and cooperation in these complex systems with her Masters student Jinyie. Synergies between our research were immediately apparent and we hope to collaborate in the future on these ideas!

I also had the chance to catch up with Tom Bell and Bonnie Waring, on topics related to the assembly of microbial communities in vivo and in vitro. They have very exciting research going on with amazing experimental setups.

Thanks Samraat for the great day at Silwood!

Today Lucie defended her PhD thesis and became a Dr after passing her viva with minor corrections.

Her thesis entitled Conservation and disturbance of complex food webs across spatial scales encompassed a range of interesting studies about the effects of different anthropogenic disturbances on the the structure of complex food webs.

She had the pleasure to have Dr Elisa Thébault from the Sorbonne University and Dr Laura Graham from the University of Birmingham as the external examiners. They had a very interesting discussion about Lucie’s work and joined us for celebrations afterwards!

Congratulations Lucie!

This week, Dr Elisa Thébault, senior researcher at the Ecology and Environmental Sciences Institute of the CNRS, and Sorbonne University, in Paris, is in Swansea for a short visit.

Elisa will share her research with us at the Biosciences Department Seminar Series on Friday 7th of February at 10.30 in the Zoology Museum.

About Elisa:

Elisa is a researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences of Paris (Sorbonne University, CNRS). She is mainly interested in studying the responses of communities and ecosystems to global changes and to better understand the links between diversity, structure of networks of interactions between species and stability of ecosystem functioning, with a particular interest in better linking theoretical approaches of mathematical modelling to experimental or empirical approaches.

SEMINAR

Species diversity, food web structure and the temporal stability of ecosystems

ABSTRACT

The consequences of diversity and food web structure on the stability of ecological communities have been debated for more than 5 decades. While the understanding of the relation between diversity and the stability of properties at community and ecosystem levels has gained from joint empirical, experimental and theoretical insights, the question of the relation between food web structure and stability has received almost exclusively theoretical attention. The lack of empirical studies on this issue is partly due to the fact that theoretical studies are often disconnected from the stability of natural ecosystems, and to the difficulty of describing and manipulating food web structure in the field. Here I will present the results of two studies aiming to investigate the relations between diversity, food web structure and the stability of community-level properties.

All Welcome!

This week I was hosted by Prof David Edwards at the Department of Plant Sciences of the University of Cambridge for a 2-day visit to exchange some exciting ideas about potential collaborations and birds!

I was very excited to hear about the projects from the members of the lab. From very interesting research on leakage effects of habitat protection in parts of sub-saharan Africa (by Xinran) and cool ideas on the potential effects of fire on forest and community regeneration (by Dom), to exciting research ideas on the effects of climate warming on tropical bird communities (Julia’s project).

Xinran kindly helped organising a seminar I presented about current work in our lab on Assessing the effects of protected areas on spatial food webs for the Department. The seminar sparked a nice discussion on modelling approaches for conservation that I am hoping would serve as a basis for future joint projects.

Aside from the interesting scientific sessions we had, it was very inspiring just to work for a couple of days at the David Attenborough Building, where many nature conservation NGOs such as BirdLife and RSPB are based. A truly inspiring place to work.

The members of the lab also took me for a College lunch, Harry Potter style! It was nice to experience college life once again even if for one day.

A great couple of days overall. Thanks very much David, Xinran, Dom, Julia, and Alex for the hospitality.