Success for Oldenburg marine scientists: a new research group led by biodiversity expert Helmut Hillebrand is focussing on the question of how biodiversity develops on islands. The German Research Foundation is funding the project with three million euros for an initial period of three years.
Food webs and biodiversity in landscapes that are constantly changing, such as the Wadden Sea, are the focus of the new research group. The scientists want to investigate the role played by the dispersal of and interactions between different organisms - in systems that have an island-like character. The basis for this is the so-called theory of island biogeography - a successful concept of ecology that scientists established a good 50 years ago.
With the help of this theory, researchers can analyse the role that the dynamic balance between immigration and extinction of species plays in the total number of species on an island. "This theory is now of great importance - also in practical nature conservation. This is because the urban sprawl of landscapes has created many island-like, isolated habitats," says Hillebrand. "However, the theory does not allow us to predict which species colonise such island habitats and how they interact." However, this information is necessary in order to predict how environmental changes, for example due to climate change, affect the dynamics of ecosystems.
International reputation
"Oldenburg's biodiversity research has an international reputation. The approval of the research group by the German Research Foundation underlines this success," says University President Prof Dr Dr Hans Michael Piper. "The interdisciplinary collaboration between the scientists involved will significantly advance our understanding of the processes in dynamic ecosystems."
The project, entitled DynaCom (Spatial community ecology in highly dynamic landscapes: from island biogeography to metaecosystems), involves scientists from the Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment and the University's Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences as well as researchers from the Senckenberg Institute, the Universities of Frankfurt, Göttingen and Münster and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig. The Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park Authority in Wilhelmshaven is also a project partner.
Ecological characteristics of the organisms
The researchers now want to investigate in more detail which characteristics of organisms determine whether organisms can establish themselves in an ecosystem and what role they play in a food web. In this so-called trait-based research, scientists do not look at individual species, but at typical characteristics or functions of different species, for example how they disperse - flying, swimming or passively - or how they absorb their food. Such results can be more easily generalised and transferred to other food webs and ecosystems around the world.
The DynaCom scientists want to investigate the various characteristics using the Wadden Sea ecosystem as an example. The environmental conditions here change rapidly, both regularly due to the tides and randomly. "As terrestrial and marine organisms meet in the Wadden Sea, we can analyse the spatial and temporal dynamics of both parts of the food web and test our theoretical ideas," explains Hillebrand. In doing so, the researchers are drawing on fundamental, existing knowledge about the occurrence of organisms in the region.
Artificial islands in the Wadden Sea
The consortium is also using twelve artificial islands, which were set up in the Wadden Sea near Spiekeroog in 2014, for observations and targeted experiments. Here, the researchers can use the small space to investigate, among other things, which organisms colonise certain habitats and how quickly, and how storm surges, for example, affect the biocoenoses. In order to be able to make more general statements about the development of ecological communities, the scientists also use mathematical models and data sets that experts have obtained from studies of island ecosystems worldwide.
