Seminar of Jason Tylianakis

“Species traits and interactions in a changing world”

Traits of species at a single trophic level are known to influence ecosystem functioning through niche complementarity. Moreover, trait matching can be important for allowing interactions among species, and interactions themselves can influence ecosystem functioning via trophic complementarity. Thus, any processes that non-randomly affect species on the basis of their traits or interactions could slow or accelerate the degradation of ecosystem functioning. I will talk about our group’s work using network approaches to understand these selection processes and how they relate to the spatial propagation of disturbance via indirect effects.