CBER External Seminar - Professor Marc Cadotte, University of Toronto

Abstract: 

Human-caused change is altering biodiversity and ecosystem processes across spatial scales.  Biodiversity is the foundation for the functioning of healthy ecosystems and for providing economic and other benefits to human wellbeing. Twenty years of experiments confirm such biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) relationships, but putting this research into real-world environmental change and management scenarios has been surprisingly limited. Environmental change drivers (hereafter referred to as stressors) can impact species differently, with positive, neutral, and negative impacts on their fitness, carrying capacity, interactions, and access to resources -and so predicting the impacts of multiple stressors on changes to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning can be complex. In this talk, I examine how biodiversity influences ecosystem functioning, and then focus on how stressors alter species contributions to function and the nature of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. I use theoretical models to examine how multiple stressors could impact BEF relationships, and then test this with experiments. I will then scale up these predictions to BEF patterns in different scenarios under anthropogenic stressors. I end off with how this research can provide insights and guidance to studying and managing biodiversity in cities.