IBR was a state-funded PhD Training Group (2014-2018).

Understanding the response of biodiversity to the pressures of global change and its role for ecosystem functions requires integrative research across basic ecology, evolutionary biology and theory as well as interdisciplinary approaches to biodiversity conservation and management. IBR was aiming to investigate biodiversity in over-arching approaches across terrestrial and marine habitats studying microbes, primary producers, and higher-level consumers focusing on the link between biodiversity and ecosystem processes. The 15 individual projects were organized in three clusters: A) Spatial Dynamics: to study the potential for rapid evolution under changing conditions as well as phylogenetic constraints on the emergent properties of communities and ecosystems. B) Eco-evolutionary Dynamics: to understand how the ability of a species to adapt to unstable conditions contributes to “Ecosystem Functioning” C) Resilience and Biodiversity in coupled human – environment systems in light of biodiversity loss in anthropogenically dominated ecosystems.

uol.de/ibr/

List of people involved:

Andrea Mentges
Thorsten Dittmar
Bernd Blasius

Collaborators:

Bernd Blasius

Key publications

Mentges A, Feenders C, Seibt M, Blasius B, and Dittmar T (2017) Functional molecular diversity of marine dissolved organic matter is reduced during degradation. Frontiers in Marine Science 4: 194.

Mentges, A., Feenders, C., Deutsch, C., Blasius, B., & Dittmar, T. (2019). Long-term stability of marine dissolved organic carbon emerges from a neutral network of compounds and microbes. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-13.

Mentges, A., Deutsch, C., Feenders, C., Lennartz, S. T., Blasius, B., & Dittmar, T. (2020). Microbial Physiology Governs the Oceanic Distribution of Dissolved Organic Carbon in a Scenario of Equal Degradability. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, 732.