Working Group Goals

A primary goal of this working group is to understand how the anthropogenic processes that underpin biodiversity change influence the loss of species, traits, and ecosystem functions. The primary breakthrough in resolving this challenge is to disentangle the influence of passive sampling (via species-area relationships) and ecosystem decay (via species extinction in smaller habitats due to demographic processes) on multiple facets of biodiversity loss.

Ongoing Research

This working group is based on global open-source data gathered to investigate the influence of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity. This comprehensive dataset compares amphibians, arthropods, birds, mammals, plants, and reptiles among forest fragments from all continents. How can social-ecological factors and landscape structure lead to species extinctions that result in a non-random loss of traits across taxon groupings? Which taxon groupings/traits are more sensitive to environmental changes? How do passive sampling and ecosystem decay explain the loss of traits? What are the main mechanisms explaining the potential negative impacts of ecosystem decay on species traits? How can species traits (and their underlying functions) help us make better conservation decisions in human-dominated landscapes? 

Researchers Involved