EBD Seminars | Towards a mechanistic ecological forecasting

Maria Paniw, Marie S Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Conservation Biology, EBD-CSIC. Abstract: Forecasting the fate of individuals, populations, and entire communities of interacting species has become an increasingly urgent endeavor in the Anthropocene. In our efforts to understand how global change affects biodiversity, ecologists have realized that robust generalizations often rely on quantifying some of the mechanisms and context-dependencies driving biodiversity change. In this talk, I will discuss how a more detailed understanding of what drives differences in survival and reproduction among individuals, populations, and species - the demographic context - can substantially improve forecasts of population and community dynamics. I will focus on my most recent work, which looks at feedbacks between species interactions and demography, and how understanding such feedbacks can substantially improve forecasts of the persistence of interacting species.