| Project Detail |
A closer look at plant coexistence in species-rich ecosystems Understanding how so many competing species can coexist in diverse ecosystems like tropical forests has long puzzled ecologists. Current models do not consider the spatial mechanisms of how community dynamics emerge from the interactions of individuals at the neighbourhood scale. The ERC-funded SpatioCoexistence project addresses this gap by developing a spatially explicit theory. By integrating cutting-edge mathematical simulations and spatial data analysis of large 50 ha forest inventory plots, the project explores how individual plant interactions influence community-wide dynamics. With over 100 000 trees mapped in detail in each plot, this research could reveal fundamental laws governing species-rich ecosystems and offer new insights for biodiversity conservation. This groundbreaking project is pushing the boundaries of ecological theory and spatial ecology. Ecologists have tried for long to explain coexistence of many competing species in communities such as tropical forests, but this key question of ecological theory remains largely unresolved. We argue that this failure originates as a scaling problem. Although plants compete mostly with their closest neighbours, the phenomenological models of most approaches addressing this question do not consider spatial mechanisms of how the dynamics and patterns at the “macroscopic” community scale emerge from the collective behaviour and interactions of individuals at the “microscopic” neighbourhood scale. We therefore propose to change the way the problem is tackled by incorporating this essential information into macroscopic mathematical models. The overarching objective of the project is to develop a spatially-explicit theory for understanding the dynamics and stability of plant communities of intermediate to high species richness at local scales. We integrate state-of-the-art mathematical and simulation approaches with methods from physics and spatial analysis of the best available spatial data, such as ForestGEO inventory data of 20-50 ha forest plots, each comprising the species identity, size and location of >100,000 trees. The link to the microscopic scale of individual plants allows us to integrate ecological detail in unprecedented ways, while keeping the theory tractable. Such a comprehensive and highly integrated research endeavour can only be tackled within the frame-work of a large project and will be a ground breaking advance at this final frontier of ecological research. The project will provide theoretical expectations and mechanistic understanding of how multiple (spatial) pattern and processes shape species richness, and reveal if simple laws govern the assembly and dynamics of complex species-rich communities. This proposal will also open the door to new research lines of spatial ecology to better understand and conserve biodiversity. |
