AQUATIC BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

We know biodiversity matters for the way ecosystems function, but we are only just beginning to understand the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes that shape this relationship, especially in complex food webs and under rapidly changing environmental conditions. For example, why do we see species with some combinations of traits (e.g., feeding traits, temperature tolerance, dispersal strategies) but not others? What does that mean for what combinations of species will make up a community and how it will function? How important are fine-scale differences among isolated populations of the same species, relative to between species? What kinds of habitats will protect both species and genetic diversity across changing landscapes? To answer these questions, ecologists and evolutionary biologists increasingly need to collaborate across disciplines, use new tools (e.g., genomic data and analysis, large scale modeling), and combine observations and experiments. We work on..