Jan Baert (UGent)

Title: Environmental dependency of biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning

Abstract: Expanding human activities are increasingly interfering with Earth’s biogeochemical cycles. This has led to unprecedented global changes in biodiversity and environmental conditions. In the past 3 decades, ecologists have principally been focusing on whether the functioning of an ecosystem depends on the number of species it contains. There is now ample evidence that biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships are generally positive, and ecosystem function provisioning is at risk by biodiversity loss. However, evidence is also mounting that the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and therefore also the consequences of biodiversity changes, depend on the environmental conditions. In my work, I ai to explain how biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships are affected by changes in environmental conditions. Theoretical models are thereby combined with microcosm experiments to demonstrate how environmental changes lead to predictable changes in biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning, and how these changes depend the type of species interactions and species sensitivities to environmental changes. As such, the presented framework offers new insights in the combined effect of upcoming biodiversity and environmental changes for ecosystem function provisioning.