With continued degradation of ecosystems, we need to know how to restore biodiversity, both for conservation and to ensure the provision of essential services provided by nature. To manage and restore diversity in human-modified systems, however, we need to understand the mechanisms that originally maintained biodiversity. The Ponisio lab studies the mechanisms operating in complex systems, specifically ecological communities, that underlie diversity maintenance.
The questions we are currently tackling are along these lines:
- How do the characteristics of communities affect interaction patterns? (beginning with species turnover, changes in species community composition through time)
- How do interaction patterns feedback to affect the characteristics of communities?
- How can we design (restore) degraded communities to promote stability and evolutionary potential? (applying all the principles learned from the above)
We adhere (as much as possible) to the best practices in data science and reprodicible science.
