Macro 2 o2o - 2nd - 5th March, 2020 University of Konstanz, Germany
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macro
2o2o
Macroecology of the Anthropocene
2nd - 5th March, 2020
University of Konstanz, Germany
CONTENTS page
Word of welcome 4
Information for contributors 5
Keynote speakers 6
Detailed schedule 7
Presentation abstracts
Tuesday talks 11
Wednesday talks 23
Thursday talks 34
Posters 38
Campus map 44
Bus information 44
Important locations 44
City map 45
Quick schedule Back cover
3
Welcome to Konstanz!
Macro2020 is the 14th annual meeting of the specialist group
Macroecology of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria, and
Switzerland (GfÖ). For this year’s conference, we will be high-
lighting the crucial role of macroecological research for address-
ing issues of current global change. By inherently considering
large spatial and temporal scales, the macroecological approach
provides a powerful tool for understanding and predicting how
ecological systems respond to rapid environmental change. We
assembled an excellent line up of presentations covering a diver-
sity of topics that should foster discussion on future directions
for our discipline and how it can be leveraged in mediating the
negative impacts of the Anthropocene.
We hope that you enjoy the meeting and look forward to your
contributions.
Sincerely,
The Macro2020 Organizing Committee
Mialy, Trevor, Qiang, and Christa
4
Information for contributors:
Talks - Talks can be uploaded during registration in K7,
or in the seminar room (R611) during coffee breaks.
Please be sure that your talk is uploaded the day be-
fore your presentation is scheduled.
Posters - Posters can be hung up during any breaks in
K7 wherever there is space on the poster boards.
Lunch: On Tuesday and Wednesday, you can use the
Mensa Card provided with registration to purchase
lunch at the University Mensa (K6).
Social events:
Ice Breaker - Monday starting at 18:00 in K7. Appetiz-
ers and drinks provided.
Poster Session - Tuesday starting at 17:15 in K7. Snacks
and drinks provided.
Conference Dinner - Wednesday at 18:00 in K7.
5Keynote Speakers
Dr. Hanno Seebens - Tuesday 3rd March
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research
Center
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
In my research, I try to break down complex
patterns into understandable chunks, which could
be generalised to understand the complexity. My
research focuses very much on the interaction of
humans and nature, mostly on how humans drive
biodiversity change by introducing new species,
so-called neobiota. I strive to understand the
introduction and establishment of neobiota over
large spatial scales and how this has changed in
the past and will change in the future. The spread
and establishment of neobiota are tightly cou-
pled to human activity, and as a consequence it
is necessary to first understand changes in human
activity related to neobiota such as trade and
transport over large spatial and temporal scales.
Much of research therefore deals with the analysis
of human activity to predict the spread and estab-
lishment of neobiota. (Abstract on page 11)
Dr. David Nogués-Bravo - Wednesday 4th
March
Center for Macroecology, Evolution, and Climate
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Den-
mark
Thousands of species and ecosystems are declin-
ing under on-going global change. My research
integrates macroecological, paleo-ecological and
genomic tools, and data, to unveil the processes
behind biotic change for providing biodiversity
tested-scenarios and prioritizing adequate con-
servation strategies. (Abstract on page 23)
6Dr. Regan Early - Thursday 5th March
Centre for Ecology and Conservation
University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, UK
Regan works on fundamental and applied bioge-
ography, seeking to understand how environmental
change redistributes wildlife by using information
on species current and past distributions. She uses
biological invasions as natural experiments and also
studies the sometimes catastrophic impacts - like
those caused by the crop pest the fall armyworm.
Recently, she’s been disentangling the effects of
biotic interactions on species distributions, with the
aim of improving forecasts of climate-driven range
shifts, biological invasions, and biological control,
and understanding of what causes biodiversity
patterns. Regan works on a multitude of ecosys-
tems, taxa, and geographic regions, using field and
computational studies. (Abstract on page 34)
Conference schedule
Monday 2nd March
15:30-
Registration Open (K7)
19:00
18:00 -
Ice Breaker (K7)
20:00
7Tuesday 3rd March
9:00 Hanno Seebens - Biological invasions: a driver and a consequence of global
change in the Anthropocene (page 11)
10:00 Qiang Yang - Global homogenization of flowering plants by naturalized species
(page 11)
10:15 Johannes Wessely - Effects of climate change and horticultural use on the spread
of naturalized alien garden plants in Europe (page 12)
10:30 COFFEE BREAK (K7)
11:15 Aurele Toussaint - Global functional spectra of plants and vertebrates (page 13)
11:45 Ana Maria Bastidas Urrutia - An analysis of global trait spaces of birds on islands
(page 14)
12:00 Lukas Heiland - How does ontogeny reshape the niche? A case study in European
forest trees (page 15)
12:15 Philipp Brun - Plant traits pushing grassland productivity beyond environmental
expectation differ with elevation (page 15)
12:30 LUNCH (K6)
14:00 Mark van Kleunen - Economic use of plants is key to unravelling their naturaliza-
tion success (page 16)
14:30 Bernd Lenzner - The option space of future alien species impacts: an expert
based assessment (page 17)
14:45 Anna Schertler - The “Global Database of Alien Pathogenic Fungi” (page 17)
15:00 Guillaume Latombe - A global perspective of the variability in socio-economic
and environmental drivers of biological invasions across countries (page 18)
15:15 Ludwig Leidinger - Island biogeography of the Anthropocene - investigating dif-
ferentiation patterns of introduced species with a mechanistic model (page 19)
15:30 COFFEE BREAK (K7)
Sarah Redlich - Novel methods in macroecology: using an automated, data-driv-
16:15 en selection process to assess the effects of climate change on biodiversity and
ecosystem services on large spatial scales (page 20)
16:30 Michael Mechenich - Finding scale-dependent macroecological patterns using a
discrete global grid system (DGGS) (page 21)
16:45 Matthias Biber - How well does the global protected area network cover the
world’s physical and climatic conditions? (page 22)
17:15 Group Photo (K7)
17:15 -
Poster Session (K7)
20:00
8Wednesday 4th March
9:00 David Nogués-Bravo - Paleo-records to safeguard biological diversity (page 23)
10:00 Mairin Balisi - Ecomorphological shifts revealed in Rancho La Brea mesocarni-
vores from Ice Age to modern-day (page 23)
10:15 Esther Dale - Does the appearance of new biomes promote diversification? Con-
trasting diversification strategies of New Zealand plant lineages (page 24)
10:30 COFFEE BREAK (K7)
11:15 Elham Nourani - Global energy seascape supports sea-crossing behavior in soar-
ing birds (page 25)
11:45 Eva Katharina Engelhardt - Cross-taxon biodiversity trends in central Europe
(page 25)
Dirk Nikolaus Karger (presented by Niklaus Zimmermann) - The mean and the
12:00 variance – Temporal variations in climate increase the accuracy of species distribu-
tion models more than spatial variation (page 26)
12:15 Yohann Chauvier - Influence of climate, soil and land cover on plant species distri-
bution in the European Alps (page 27)
12:30 LUNCH (K6)
14:00 Alke Voskamp - Impacts of climate change on the phylogenetic diversity of the
world’s terrestrial birds (page 28)
14:30 Patrick Weigelt - A global quantitative bioregionalization for plants (page 29)
14:45 Anne Lewerentz - Biodiversity distribution and temporal trends of submerged
macrophytes along depth gradient in different lake types (page 30)
15:00 Bianca Saladin - Rapid climate change results in long-lasting spatial homogeniza-
tion of phylogenetic diversity (page 30)
15:15 Brian Steidinger - The latitudinal mycorrhizal/tree diversity gradients: are these
the same thing? (page 31)
15:30 COFFEE BREAK (K7)
16:15 Franz Essl - AlienScenarios: developing scenarios and models of biological inva-
sions for the 21st century (page 32)
16:45 Guohuan Su - Morphological sorting of introduced freshwater fish species within
and between donor realms (page 32)
17:00 Trevor Fristoe - Dimensions of invasiveness are largely entangled in Europe’s alien
flora (page 33)
18:00 -
Conference Dinner (K7)
20:00
9Thursday 5th March
9:00 Regan Early - Moving beyond climate as a driver of species distributions globally
(page 34)
10:00 COFFEE BREAK (K7)
10:45 Christian König - Effects of spatial grain size on species association patterns in
joint species distribution models (page 35)
11:15 Vladimír Remeš - Local co-occurrence in Australian birds: examining its ecological
and evolutionary correlates while accounting for biogeography (page 35)
11:30 Mialy Razanajatovo - Does phylogenetic relatedness influence the formation of
novel pollination interactions? (page 36)
11:45 Stefan Dullinger - Extinction debts and colonization credits of non-forest plants in
the European Alps (page 37)
12:00 Meelis Pärtel - Dark diversity of plant communities in the Anthropocene (page
37)
10Presentation abstracts
TALKS
TUESDAY
Biological invasions: a driver and a consequence of global
change in the Anthropocene
(Tuesday 9:00 KEYNOTE)
Hanno Seebens
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
With increasing pressures imposed by humans on nature marcoecological pat-
terns can hardly be understood without taking the human component into ac-
count. One of the major drivers affecting large-scale distributions of species
represents the introduction of organisms by human agency to regions outside
their native range. The dimension of this biological invasion is immense and
increasing with no sign of saturation. The introduction of alien species can have
far-reaching consequences on nature and human well-being, and even has the
potential to shift biogeographical boundaries. On the other side, alien species
have also shown to support ecosystem functioning in various ways and rep-
resents a component of “our” nature, which we do not want to miss and cannot
avoid. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the current state of biolog-
ical invasions worldwide and how this has changed during the last centuries.
I will show how the introduction of alien species influences well-established
patterns of biodiversity, namely species-area relationships, and will discuss this
development in the context of the theory of island biogeography. Finally, I will
challenge our view on nativeness of nature and nature conservation in general.
Global homogenization of flowering plants by naturalized spe-
cies
(Tuesday 10:00)
Qiang Yang, Anke Stein, Patrick Weigelt, Trevor Fristoe, Zhijie Zhang,
Hanno Seebens, Marten Winter, Christian König, Robin Pouteau,
Wayne Dawson, Stefan Dullinger, Franz Essl, Holger Kreft, Bernd
Lenzner, Noëlie Maurel, Dietmar Moser, Jan Pergl, Petr Pyšek, and
Mark van Kleunen
11Ecology Lab, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464 Konstanz, Germany Human activities and the consequent extirpations of native species and intro- ductions of non-native species have largely modified the composition of spe- cies assemblages throughout the world. These anthropogenic impacts have not only changed the richness of regional assemblages but also reduced the taxonomic dissimilarity among them, leading to the homogenization of many taxonomic groups across regions. Moreover, Darwin’s naturalization hypothesis predicts that invaders less related to native flora are more likely to be success- ful than those that are closely related to natives, implying that addition of natu- ralized species to a regional flora from more distantly related clades would also increase the evolutionary similarity between regional floras. While some work has been conducted assessing biotic homogenization at the national level, the extent of homogenization of the global flora, especially its phylogenetic com- ponent, has rarely been explored. Using inventories of native species from the database GIFT (the Global Inven- tory of Floras and Traits) and records of naturalized species from the database GloNAF (Global Naturalized Alien Flora), we estimate to what extent natural- ized species contribute to the taxonomic and phylogenetic homogenization of flowering plants between global regions. To have a comprehensive under- standing of the main drivers of homogenization, we further assess how the rel- ative changes in the taxonomic and phylogenetic dissimilarity between global regions relate to biogeographical and macroeconomic factors. We pay special attention to drivers that are most likely to determine the species introduction and establishment rate, including geographic distance, climatic similarity, and anthropologentic factors. Effects of climate change and horticultural use on the spread of naturalized alien garden plants in Europe (Tuesday 10:15) Günther Klonner, Johannes Wessely et al. Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Rennweg 14, 1030 Vienna, Austria Climate warming is supposed to enlarge the area climatically suitable to the naturalization of alien garden plants in temperate regions. Therefore, regulat- ing biological invasions has become a priority of environmental policy. Howev- er, the combined effects of a changing climate and invasive species policies on the spatio-temporal spread of naturalized ornamentals have not been evaluat- ed at larger scales so far. Here, we assess how climate change and the frequen- 12
cy of cultivation interactively determine the spread of ornamental plants over
the 21st century in Europe. We coupled species distribution modelling with
simulations of demography and dispersal to predict range dynamics of 15
exemplary garden plants in annual steps across Europe at a fine resolution.
Models were run under three scenarios of climate warming and six levels
of cultivation intensity. Latter was implemented as size of the area used for
planting a species. Although the climatically suitable area increases for all
15 species, the area predicted to be occupied by 2090 shrinks under two
of the three climate change scenarios. This contradiction obviously arises
from dispersal limitations that were pronounced although we assumed that
cultivation is spatially adapting to the changing climate. Cultivation intensity
had a much stronger effect on species spread than climate change, and this
effect was non-linear. The area occupied increased sharply from low to mod-
erate levels of cultivation intensity, but levelled off afterwards. Our simula-
tions suggest that climate warming will not substantially foster the spread of
alien garden plants in Europe over the next decades. However, climatically
suitable areas do increase and hence an invasion debt is likely accumulat-
ing. Restricting cultivation of species can be effective in preventing species
spread, irrespective of how the climate develops. However, for being suc-
cessful, restrictions have to reduce cultivation intensity to very low levels.
Global functional spectra of plants and vertebrates
(Tuesday 11:15)
Aurele Toussaint
Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, Department of Botany, University
of Tartu, Lai 40, Tartu 51005, Estonia
The human-induced collapse of species has triggered a sixth mass extinction
crisis worldwide. Around 40% of species accessed by IUCN are threatened.
However, their ecological role and their contribution to the ecosystem func-
tioning are not equivalent between species. For that, species need to be
characterized not only by their taxonomy but also throughout their func-
tional traits which might disentangle the different roles of species but also
inform about their extinction risk. Here, using databases of traits for more
than 80,000 species across five taxonomic groups (plants, mammals, birds,
reptiles, amphibians, and freshwater fishes), we characterized their global
functional diversity and their functional vulnerability face to extinction of
threatened species. We showed that the functional space of most groups
(except fishes) can be summarized in two main dimensions related to size,
pace of life, and reproductive strategies. The distribution of species within
these planes is strongly clumped toward a high-density core in the functional
13space testifying that most of species shared close functional traits, but few are extremely widespread. Then using IUCN categories to map extinction risk in the functional trait space, we show that threatened species tend to share simi- lar functional traits for most of the groups, as large-sized, slow-paced and slow reproducing species. Their extinction is likely to lead to denser aggregation of species toward an even denser core of the functional trait space for a majority of the studied groups. Thus, our results show that despite the large variation of functional strategies within each taxonomic group, there are some strategies that are globally more successful in the present and conservation of rare and extreme strategies might help to preserve a high functional diversity which may support the resistance and resilience of ecosystems. An analysis of global trait spaces of birds on islands (Tuesday 11:30) Ana Maria Bastidas Urrutia and Christian Hof Biodiversity and Global Change Lab, Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, Technical University of Munich, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany The equilibrium theory of island biogeography (ETIB) predicts island species richness patterns based on immigration and extinction processes, which are in- fluenced by island characteristics (e.g., isolation and area). Recently, the rise of trait-based approaches has been influencing the field of biogeography, includ- ing the ETIB. For example, trophic characteristics and dispersal traits should influence the likelihood of species to colonize islands, i.e. whether they can get to the island and maintain a population. Here, we present an analytical frame- work that integrates various traits in a multi-dimensional trait space and links them to the predictions of the ETIB and its trait-based extensions. Using the bird communities of the world’s islands as a study system, we used eco-morphological traits as surrogates for resource acquisition and dispersal characteristics. Trait information was compiled from museum specimens, pub- lic databases, and the literature. Information on species distributions and geo- physical island characteristics were also compiled from published databases. Globally, 6.193 species of birds are occurring on 18.428 islands larger than 1km². Our preliminary results show that dispersal ability (as indicated by the re- spective morphological traits) increases with increasing isolation. Furthermore, the average trophic level increases with island size and decreases with island isolation, suggesting that the occurrence of species on small islands is mainly limited to species from lower trophic levels. Overall, these and other results provide general insights into the determinants of the variation of trait spaces among different island bird communities and 14
increase our understanding of the variation of functional diversity on islands in
general.
How does ontogeny reshape the niche? A case study in Europe-
an forest trees
(Tuesday 11:45)
Lukas Heiland, Georges Kunstler, and Lisa Hülsmann
Theoretical Ecology, University of Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31, 93053
Regensburg
The niche is a widely applied concept in ecology: It is both a long-standing
explanation for species coexistence, as well as a tool to explain and predict
the probability of species to occur. In particular, the niche’s resource facet, the
Grinnellian niche, in conjunction with the Hutchinsonian way of picturing it as a
hypervolume in a space of environmental gradients, is used to predict species
occurrence at the macroscopic scale. The Hutchinson niche is a representation
of the viable conditions for species to maintain populations over generations
and throughout all life-stages. But how does this niche concept relate to differ-
ent life stages and ontogeny overall?
We will provide a theoretical framework, regarding the niche as an intersection
of all the viable hypervolumes for respective ontogenetic stages. In particu-
lar, we will explore a priori, which processes could lead to different ways of
divergence and overlap among different ontogenetic hypervolumes in sessile
and dispersing organisms, like plants. The two parsimonious explanations for
mechanisms leading to divergence of observed environmental hypervolumes
are: (1) environmental filtering shifting in time, through processes like climate
change, and (2) filtering shifting during ontogeny.
We will then assess the relation of the viable environmental hypervolumes of
recruit and adult trees in European forests. Integrating data from multiple na-
tional forest inventories, we will test the hypothesis that, as a species’ pheno-
type changes during its life history (like, e.g., specific leaf area decreasing with
age), the optimal environmental conditions will shift. As a consequence, we
expect a broader environmental hypervolume and distribution for recruits than
for adult trees of the same species. Acknowledging the difference in these hy-
pervolumes will both contribute to explain species’ coexistence through niche
partitioning and improve predicting species’ occurrence under changing cli-
mate.
Plant traits pushing grassland productivity beyond environmental
expectation differ with elevation
(Tuesday 12:00)
15Philipp Brun, Niklaus E. Zimmermann, Sébastien Lavergne, Tamara Münkemüller, Catherine H. Graham, and Wilfried Thuiller Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL), 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland Grassland productivity is driven by climate and soil conditions, and by the num- ber of species present. However, the ecological strategy of species, i.e., their capacity to tap on the local resources and produce biomass under the given conditions, is crucial as well, but corresponding relationships remain largely unexplored. Here, we combined >30’000 grassland community plots in the French and Swiss Alps, information on eight key functional traits for the ~500 most frequent species, and high-resolution satellite-sensed productivity esti- mates to identify ecological strategies that promote productivity beyond envi- ronmental expectation. Species whose presence patterns improved semi-para- metric models explaining productivity with environment and species richness (key species) were more numerous in communities occurring at 2000-3000 m above sea level than in those occurring at 0-1000 or 1000-2000 m. Further- more, compared to other species they formed distinct clusters in trait space. These clusters were more dispersed for the key species at low elevations than at high elevations and they shifted from generally representing tall species with high specific leaf area (SLA) to representing small species with low SLA as elevation increased. Finally, key species showed distinct patterns of dominance and functional distinctiveness in communities with productivity above and be- low environmental expectation. Our results contribute to a better understand- ing of how ecological strategies are related to key ecosystem functions which may ultimately inform more efficient and purposeful conservation policy. Economic use of plants is key to unravelling their naturalization success (Tuesday 14:00) Mark van Kleunen, Xinyi Xu, Qiang Yang, Noëlie Maurel, Zhijie Zhang, Wayne Dawson, Franz Essl, Holger Kreft, Jan Pergl, Petr Pyšek, Patrick Weigelt, Dietmar Moser, Bernd Lenzner & Trevor Fristoe Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Con- servation, Taizhou University, Taizhou 318000, China Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstrasse 10, D-78457 Konstanz, Germany Humans cultivate thousands of plant taxa with economic value outside their na- tive ranges. To analyze how this contributes to naturalization success, we com- bined global databases on economic uses and naturalization success of plants. The naturalization likelihood is almost 18 times higher for economic than for 16
non-economic plants. Naturalization success is highest for plants grown as an-
imal food or for environmental uses (e.g. as ornamentals), and increases with
the number of uses. Taxa from the Northern Hemisphere are disproportionate-
ly over-represented among economic plants, and economic plants from Asia
have the greatest naturalization success. The percentage of economic plants
in regional naturalized floras increased towards the equator, and exceeds the
global percentage. Phylogenetic patterns in the naturalized flora partly result
from phylogenetic patterns in the plants we cultivate. Our study illustrates that
accounting for the intentional introduction of plants with economic use is key
to unravelling the drivers of plant naturalization.
The option space of future alien species impacts: an expert
based assessment
(Tuesday 14:30)
Bernd Lenzner, Brady Mattson, Stefan Dullinger, Franz Essl
Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Austria
Impacts caused by invasive alien species (IAS) on the environment and human
livelihoods are substantial and on the rise world-wide. Accordingly, much re-
search has been devoted to understanding the historical trajectories of alien
species accumulation, the impacts they cause, and to improving the under-
standing of the underlying drivers. At the same time, much less work has been
devoted to assessing the potential future impacts of alien species. This has sev-
eral reasons: first, biological invasions are a complex and context-dependent
phenomenon, which severely constrains the development of scenarios and
predictive models, in particular over long time-periods and for a large amount
of alien species spread across a range of taxonomic groups. Second, impacts
caused by alien species on the environment and human livelihoods may differ
severely, and have to take into account that perceptions, values and interests
further complicate the assessment and projection of impacts.
Here, we provide an assessment of how a set of pre-defined drivers may affect
biological invasions in contrasting contexts over the next three decades (until
2050), based on the knowledge of biological invasions experts. Specifically, we
address the following questions: (i) Which proportional increase of the status
quo of alien species impacts in a specific context is considered to cause major
impacts on the environment? (ii) Secondly, we constructed two alternative fu-
tures, i.e. plausible best case- and worst case-scenarios of the 15 most relevant
drivers on future (mid-21st century) impacts of biological invasions in different
contexts.
The “Global Database of Alien Pathogenic Fungi”
17(Tuesday 14:45) Anna Schertler, Bernd Lenzner, Stefan Dullinger, Dietmar Moser, Col- laborators, and Franz Essl University of Vienna, Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, Rennweg 14, 1030 Vienna, Austria Human-mediated spread of species beyond their native ranges has undergone a remarkable acceleration within the last decades (Seebens et al. 2017). Con- sequently, efforts to quantify biological invasions worldwide (e.g. Capinha et al. 2017, Dawson et al. 2017, Pyšek et al. 2017) and identify underlying drivers (e.g. Seebens et al. 2017, Moser et al. 2018) have been made, taking advan- tage of recently compiled global databases on alien species. As invasion biology exhibits a strong bias towards vascular plants and verte- brates, other major groups, as for example fungi, are often severely underrep- resented or missing (Desprez-Loustau et al. 2007). However, many fungi are crucial for nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning, while others engage in important mutualistic or parasitic biotic interactions (Willis 2018). As advancing methods in molecular ecology have allowed for noteworthy progress on spe- cies delimitation and identification of native and alien ranges (Gladieux et al. 2015), the compilation of a global database on alien fungal pathogens has be- come feasible. Given the large impacts pathogenic fungi cause on the environ- ment and human livelihoods (Fisher et al. 2012), this has become an important knowledge gap to address. Here, we introduce the “Global Database of Alien Pathogenic Fungi”, a com- prehensive database on the worldwide distribution of introduced and emerging fungal pathogens (including Ooymcetes). This database contains information on alien distributions (taken from a wide range of sources), complemented by data on taxonomy, functional traits and life-history characteristics relevant for invasion, years of first records, associated hosts and observed impacts. Further, we will present applications of this database for answering macroecological and biogeographical questions, and highlight the role of linked plant-fungal invasions. A global perspective of the variability in socio-economic and environmental drivers of biological invasions across countries (Tuesday 15:00) Guillaume Latombe, Céline Bellard, Franck Courchamp, Wayne Daw- son, Christophe Diagne, Stefan Dullinger, Marina Golivets, Jonathan Jeschke, Ingolf Kühn, Bernd Lenzner, Brian Leung, Dietmar Moser, Núria Roura-Pascual, Wolf-Christian Saul, Hanno Seebens, Anna Turbe- 18
lin, and Franz Essl
Division of Conservation Biology, Vegetation and Landscape Ecology, Depart-
ment of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Rennweg 14,
1030 Vienna, Austria
The rapid increase in numbers and impacts of alien species has become defin-
ing characteristic of the Anthropocene. Recent studies have shown that there
are no signs of a slowing down of alien species accumulation. Given the in-
creases in underlying drivers of invasions such as trade and land use, it is likely
that future impacts of biological invasion will increase further. Nonetheless,
there is a lack of scenarios and models on the potential future of biological
invasions.
Coupled with quantitative models, scenarios have become crucial for policy
and decision making for a wide range of environmental applications, and have
been widely used for climate change. Recently, a framework for such scenar-
ios for the spread and impact of alien species in the 21st century has been
developed (Roura-Pascual et al. in review). These scenarios follow four global
scenario families, each representing a plausible future trajectory of changes in
the main environmental and socio-economic drivers of the distribution, spread
and impact of alien species.
For the first time, we present an assessment of 122 countries’ performance in
relationship to these drivers of future biological invasions. We use a represen-
tative set of global predictors of alien species distribution, spread and impact
to map countries on a global invasion landscape. We map the countries on in-
vasion pathways which are related to global invasion scenarios. In doing so, we
identify the main challenges countries currently face for reducing the impacts
of invasions, and we identify how different geopolitical groups of countries per-
form and how they differ. We discuss limitations of this approach and provide
recommendations for addressing the country-specific challenges for reducing
future invasion impacts.
Island biogeography of the Anthropocene - investigating dif-
ferentiation patterns of introduced species with a mechanistic
model
(Tuesday 15:15)
Ludwig Leidinger, Daniel Vedder, Juliano Sarmento Cabral
Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology, University of Würzburg
Classical island biogeography theory relies on clearly defined isolation be-
tween islands or the mainland to explain colonisation, extinction and specia-
tion. In the globalized world, however, isolation between islands can hardly
19be measured by distance alone, but must consider, e.g., commercial connec- tivity. For several species, commercial connectivity explains current distribu- tions better than distance. What effects these anthropogenic distribution and re-introduction patterns have on the evolutionary trajectory of transported and native species can not be assessed yet. Here we employ a genome-explicit individual based model to investigate whether and how repeated introductions of species within an island network (archipelago) affect diversification rates of populations. We contrast scenarios of no human interference, reflecting natural dispersal between islands, with scenarios where single species from the islands are displaced repeatedly to other islands. Specifically we address the following questions: Does human mediated transport lead to increased differentiation of transported species? How are native communities affected by introduced spe- cies? We find that the rate of differentiation of transported species depends on transportation frequency and genomic traits of transported species. The diversity responses of island communities depend on spatial scale and suc- cess of transported species. While alpha-diversity (i.e. within-island richness) increases through transported species, gamma-diversity (whithin archipelago) decreases in most cases. However, highly differentiating species may contrib- ute to elevated in-situ speciation rates at longer time periods even after cessa- tion of introductions , thus increasing alpha-, beta- and gamma-diversity at the evolutionary temporal scales. Our findings provide insights into the potential impacts of repeated species introductions within an archipelago and demon- strate how evolutionary patterns may be affected by anthropogenic influences. Novel methods in macroecology: using an automated, data-driv- en selection process to assess the effects of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services on large spatial scales (Tuesday 16:15) Sarah Redlich, Jie Zhang, and Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter University of Wuerzburg, Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology The Anthropocene is characterised by two dramatic environmental changes: First, natural systems are continuously being transformed into artificial land- scapes dominated by urban areas or agricultural land. Second, resulting from these land use changes and the burning of fossil fuels, greenhouse gas effects lead to global warming and weather extremes. But how does land use and climate influence plant and animal biodiversity, and the provisioning of ecosys- tem services such as pollination, biological pest control and decomposition? Are there interactive effects of land use and climatic conditions? And can bio- diversity at population, species community and landscape level improve the re- silience against climate change and extreme climatic events? To answer these 20
questions, the LandKlif research network investigates the biodiversity and
multi-functionality of landscapes with different levels of anthropogenic impact,
situated along a temperature gradient in Bavaria, Germany. This is done using
a novel approach that deals with the fact that landscape studies investigating
climate-biodiversity patterns are often biased due to correlations between cli-
matic conditions, spatial distribution of study sites, and landscape composition
and configuration around study sites. We developed a novel method of select-
ing study sites using large-scale land use and climate data combined with an
automated moving window approach. This allowed us to select independent
climate and land use gradients within Bavaria, while also avoiding landscape
composition and configuration correlations on smaller spatial scales that often
hamper our ability to disentangle individual or interactive effects of land use
and climate.
Finding Scale-Dependent Macroecological Patterns Using a Dis-
crete Global Grid System (DGGS)
(Tuesday 16:30)
Michael Mechenich
Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Macroecological patterns observed today provide a means of understanding
the biosphere’s current structure, reconstructing its past, and predicting its fu-
ture. Earth observation (EO) datasets are readily available today, but are dis-
tributed in a wide variety of spatial data formats, spatial and temporal extents
and resolutions, and coordinate reference systems. This complicates combin-
ing these datasets, quantifying relationships between flora, fauna, and abiotic
environment, and testing macroecological theory.
To this end, we developed the Ecosphere spatial database, built on a discrete
global grid system (DGGS) dividing the whole of the Earth’s surface into dis-
crete, regular cells at several spatial resolutions. Utilizing the Icosahedral Sny-
der Equal-Area (ISEA) projection and hexagonal cell topology, the DGGS de-
fines sets of equal-area, uniformly adjacent cells, congruent across resolutions
ranging from 10 to 150 kilometers. Within this spatial framework we incorpo-
rate widely used, remotely sensed and ground-based climatological, land cov-
er, and species range datasets. The Ecosphere database will be made openly
available in 2020.
In this presentation, we discuss the development of the database, and highlight
its usage in several case studies. Using supervised machine learning, we found
scale-dependent patterns of association between, on the one side, mammal
community structure, and community summaries of mammal species’ function-
al traits; and on the other, elements of the biotic and abiotic environment,
21including temperature, precipitation, productivity, and vegetation type. Result- ing statistical models are useful both in understanding the nature of these as- sociations, and in predicting unseen conditions, past and future. However, perhaps as interesting are the spatial patterns of model residuals. We are decades, perhaps centuries or millennia, into the Anthropocene Ep- och. Well-documented, large-scale changes in climate, land cover, and species distributions occurred in the 20th century, disrupting natural macroecological patterns. In examining regions in which our models do not hold, we learn more about both the exceptions and the rules. How well does the global protected area network cover the world’s physical and climatic conditions? (Tuesday 16:45) Matthias Biber, Alke Voskamp, and Christian Hof Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, Technical University of Munich, D-85354 Freising, Germany Protected areas (PAs) are one of the most effective ways of conserving biodi- versity and have been steadily growing in number and areal extent over the last few decades. Yet, we still struggle to fulfill the Aichi’s Target 11 to protect 17% of the terrestrial and 10% of the marine areas by 2020. Existing conservation areas are often chosen on a national level and too rarely in consideration with neighbouring countries or already existing PAs. This may lead to an over-repre- sentation of certain climatic and physical conditions within the existing PA net- work, which may in turn weaken their overall potential to conserve biodiversity. Here, we assess the physical and climatic coverage of the current global PA network, highlight which conditions currently lack protection and where these conditions are located. For this, we quantified the percentage cover of the global PA network at a spatial resolution of 1km² and combined these with climatic and topographic data for terrestrial areas (Worldclim v2 and EarthEnv, respectively) and for marine areas (MARSPEC). For terrestrial areas, low and high temperature conditions are well protected (> 17%), while areas with intermediate temperatures are not. Around 25 % of terrestrial areas experience conditions of relatively low annual precipitation, yet these conditions are not well protected. All elevational levels are protected by less than 15 %. For marine areas, low and high temperature as well as low salinity conditions are well protected (> 10%), while intermediate temperatures and high salinity conditions are not. Areas with a low and high depth to the seafloor are also well protected, in contrast to areas with intermediate depths. While we are aware that strategies for protected area planning require a large spectrum of different aspects (among which biodiversity measures should 22
dominate), our results highlight the need to also consider physical and climatic
conditions for conservation.
WEDNESDAY
Paleo-records to safeguard biological diversity
(Wednesday 9:00 KEYNOTE)
David Nogués-Bravo
Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Globe Institute,
University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences
The ongoing global decline of biological diversity presents a major challenge
for a sustainable future of modern societies. I will bring evidence showing that
this decline is accelerating but started already thousands of years ago, as a
result of direct anthropic impacts and past climate change. I will present also
unpublished results showing whether these drivers of biodiversity decline, at
the genetic level, have already significantly modified globally current patterns
of mammalian diversity resulting from millions of years of evolution. Those evi-
dences strongly suggest the need to incorporate paleo-records to improve our
knowledge on biodiversity erosion and to provide better estimates of species
extinction risk, species conservation status and adequate managing decisions
in the ground.
Ecomorphological shifts revealed in Rancho La Brea mesocarni-
vores from Ice Age to modern-day
(Wednesday 10:00)
Mairin Balisi
La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA; School of Natural Sci-
ences, University of California, Merced, CA, USA
Major disturbances may precipitate the rise of novel communities, as was
seen after the last Ice Age following a combination of megafaunal extinctions,
climatic change, and human impacts. As large carnivores and large prey dis-
appeared, so did the interactions that had exerted cascading trophic effects.
Most of the Anthropocene’s remaining carnivores are of small to medium body
size: mesocarnivores.
North American mesocarnivores from Pleistocene to Recent present a natural
laboratory to track the effects of large-scale biotic and abiotic disturbance on a
faunal community. Here, I quantify the ecomorphology of mesocarnivores from
the Rancho La Brea (RLB) asphalt seeps in Los Angeles, southern California,
USA. While RLB is known for abundantly trapping megafauna, the asphalt also
23ensnared smaller carnivores, evaluated here for the first time. Excluding coyotes, RLB preserves five mesocarnivore species having sample sizes >=10 individuals: badger (Taxidea taxus), bobcat (Lynx rufus), grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis), and long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata). These species were found in 33 separate deposits spanning 44,650–5,270 radiocarbon years before present and continue to in- habit Los Angeles today. In various linear ecomorphological traits, most RLB specimens differ significantly from historic representatives of the same species. Mesocarnivores were generally larger in the late Pleistocene and Holocene, un- dergoing as much as a 27% reduction in body size into the Anthropocene. RLB mesocarnivores also exhibit greater tendencies for carnivory, as quantified by the slicing and grinding areas of the teeth, perhaps in response to greater lev- els of competition presented by megafaunal carnivores. Further, species-spe- cific differences in postcranial morphology highlight shifts in mesocarnivore locomotor ability, potentially reflecting environmental changes. These results highlight the utility of a deep-time approach to studies of the Anthropocene. As different species likely responded to different stressors, future analyses will refine radiocarbon chronology to pinpoint potential causes for these shifts. Does the appearance of new biomes promote diversification? Contrasting diversification strategies of New Zealand plant lin- eages (Wednesday 10:15) Esther Dale Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, Dunedin, Department of Botany, University of Otago, New Zealand Biome shifts are often regarded as difficult and rare, with lineages tending to remain in their ancestral biome rather than shifting into novel biomes. De- spite this, the appearance of novel biomes can be important for diversification because they present new ecological opportunities to lineages that shift into them. I explore the question: does the appearance of new biomes promote diversification in plant lineages? New Zealand has had a progression of differ- ent biomes appearing in sequence over the past 5 million years, which makes it an excellent system for exploring this question. My approach involves bio- geographic modelling of biomes occupied through time and inferring biome shifts and speciation events for six New Zealand plant lineages. There were two types of lineage: ones that generally remained in their ancestral biome and were not particularly affected by novel biomes appearing, or lineages that shifted into new biomes then diversified further within the novel biomes. Lin- eages that tended to remain in their ancestral biome had consistent biome 24
shift rates through time and speciation predominantly in the ancestral biome.
The lineages that shifted out of their ancestral biome tended to have high bi-
ome shift rates when new biomes appeared, and speciation largely within the
novel biomes. Speciation was not directly linked to biome shifts, but when lin-
eages shifted out of their ancestral biome, the new ecological opportunities of
the novel biomes fostered subsequent diversification within the new biomes.
This demonstrates that new biomes can create opportunities for diversification,
but only in some lineages.
Global energy seascape supports sea-crossing behavior in soar-
ing birds
(Wednesday 11:15)
Elham Nourani and Kamran Safi
Department of Migration, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Radolfzell,
Germany.
Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Germany
Terrestrial soaring birds are thought to avoid crossing the open sea due to the
energetic cost of flying over water. Uplifts, which are vertically rising air currents
that subsidize soaring flight, are weak or absent over water. Yet, remote-track-
ing studies show that sea-crossing behavior in these species is not as rare as
previously thought. In a recent study, we found that the dynamics of the en-
ergy seascape, quantified by calculating temperature gradient between the
sea-surface and the air (as a proxy for uplift potential), can explain sea-crossing
behavior in a soaring species over the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, we showed
that contrary to the traditional beliefs about the impossibility of soaring flight
over temperate seas, uplift potential exists over the sea can aid terrestrial birds
in tackling such ecological barriers. In the current study, we test the generality
of the energy seascape concept by applying it at the global scale. We construct
the global energy seascape using forty years of temperature data and compare
it to the available remote-tracking migratory trajectories for soaring birds that
perform sea-crossing. This study sheds light on a largely overlooked aspect of
the influence of atmospheric conditions on migratory birds. Hence, alterations
in the sea-surface and air temperatures due to climate change can potentially
disrupt the spatio-temporal patterns of optimal migration strategies in terres-
trial soaring birds.
Cross-taxon biodiversity trends in central Europe
(Wednesday 11:45)
Eva Katharina Engelhardt, Matthias Biber, and Christian Hof
Biodiversity & Global Change Lab, Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, Tech-
25nical University of Munich, Germany Changes in climate and land-use are considered to have considerable impacts on different levels of biodiversity, associated with rapid declines in many pop- ulations, range shifts, and changes in species communities. Most studies in- vestigating such biodiversity trends are limited by a lack of reliable fine-scale, long-term field data, especially in highly heterogeneous regions. In central Eu- rope, heterogeneous areas are affected by different human pressures acting at different scales and changing over short spatial distances, which increases the need for fine-scaled assessments of biodiversity trends. The state of Bavaria in southern Germany includes a diverse mixture of landscapes and habitats, rang- ing from lowland forests and floodplains to alpine environments. Therefore, Bavaria may serve as a model region for recent pressures on central European biodiversity. Here, we present long-term trends in four ecologically and physiologically different animal taxa (birds, butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers), based on survey data over the course of more than 30 years. Specifically, we analyse the data using occupancy models to obtain reliable population trends, and link these trends to species’ traits, indicating possible drivers of change. For instance, declines of cold-adapted species and increases in warm-adapted species may indicate that climate warming has already affected the Bavarian fauna. As another example, a decrease of wide ranged species could indicate that species declines are a large scale problem, while stable populations of protected species could show positive effects of focussed conservation efforts. Our results emphasize the need for systematic, reliable assessments of the ef- fects of human pressures on different levels of biodiversity, especially in areas as greatly affected by human actions as central Europe. Understanding past influences of climate and land-use change on species is the first step towards the mitigation of increasing human pressures on biodiversity in the future. The mean and the variance – Temporal variations in climate increase the accuracy of species distribution models more than spatial variation (Wednesday 12:00) Dirk Nikolaus Karger, Bianca Saladin, Rafael O. Wüest, and Niklaus E. Zimmermann Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zuercherstrasse 111 CH-8903 Birmens- dorf, Switzerland Species distribution models (SDMs) heavily rely on climatic predictors such as mean annual temperatures or precipitation sums to describe the environmental 26
niche space of a species. Additionally, several bioclimatic variables, such as
temperature and precipitation seasonality, isothermality, or the annual tem-
perature range are often used to act as proxies for the temporal dynamics of
the climate system. These climatic variables describe, however, only the mean
climatic variance of a system within a year. They ignore an important aspect of
the climate system, namely the long-term variability in climate, most species
experience during their lifetime. Two spatial locations might have, for example,
the same mean temperature. If one has a higher inter-annual variation than
the other, it might provide quite a different habitat to species than one with a
lower variation. This inter-annual variability in climate is often simply ignored in
species distribution models. Additionally, spatial variability, such as higher and
higher resolutions, are generally believed to lead to a large improvement in the
accuracy of species distribution models. We tested the predictive performance
of temporal variability in temperature and precipitation against their spatial
variability for three major tetrapod groups globally - mammals, reptiles, and
amphibians - using three commonly used climate datasets: CHELSA, World-
Clim, and CRU. We can show that including temporal variability of temperature
and precipitation into species distributions increases their performance more
than spatial variation does. The inclusion of temporal variability increases the
predictive accuracy of several biodiversity metrics such as alpha- and beta di-
versity, while the actual differences between climate datasets do not seem to
be significant. Altogether, climate variability seems to be an important factor
that needs to be accounted for when we try to describe species environmental
niches.
Influence of climate, soil and land cover on plant species distri-
bution in the European Alps
(Wednesday 12:15)
Yohann Chauvier, Wilfried Thuiller, Philipp Brun, Sébastien Lavergne,
Patrice Descombes, Dirk N. Karger, Julien Renaud, and Niklaus E.
Zimmermann
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zuercherstrasse 111 CH-8903 Birmens-
dorf, Switzerland
Although the effect of edaphic parameters and habitat structure on plant
growth and survival is known, both are rarely incorporated when investigating
plant species and diversity distribution. In addition to climate, those missing
components are decisive for a better understanding of biodiversity distribu-
tion, especially in mountain ecosystems which have complex soils and habitat
boundaries. Here, we contrasted the importance of climate, soil and land cov-
er, in predicting the distributions of 2.616 vascular plant species in the Euro-
27pean Alps. Using presence-only data, we build different point-process models (PPMs) to relate species observations to different combinations of PCA co- variates related to climate, soil and land cover, as well as using an innovative variance partitioning approach. We found that climate was the most influential driver of plant species distribution (60.3%) with a decreasing influence from low to high elevations. In contrast, soil (19.1%) and land cover (20.6%) had lower importance and followed an increasing trend of influence from low to high elevation. Nevertheless, land cover showed a strong local effect at lowlands whereas the contribution of soil stabilized at mid-elevations. The decreasing influence of climate with elevation is explained by climate becoming more ho- mogeneous as altitude increases along with environmental conditions, while soil follows the opposite trend. Additionally, in the lowlands human mediated land cover effects appear to reduce climate influence. Overall, our results make clear that future studies would benefit markedly from including soil and land cover effects in predicting species distributions. Impacts of climate change on the phylogenetic diversity of the world’s terrestrial birds (Wednesday 14:00) Alke Voskamp, Matthias Biber, Christian Hof, and Susanne Fritz Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Climate change is affecting species abundances and distributions. These re- sponses alone are already projected to lead to a global decrease in biodiversity but idiosyncratic responses of species, due to their abiotic tolerances and dis- persal abilities, could amplify or ameliorate the impacts. These heterogeneous responses have the potential to reshuffle species assemblages globally. Poten- tial consequences include changes to the co-occurrence patterns of competing species, the trait composition of local assemblages, as well as the phylogenetic diversity of species assemblages. Here we use species distribution models (SDMs), to investigate the impacts of climate change on terrestrial bird distributions and, subsequently, the species richness (SR), phylogenetic diversity (PD) and mean pairwise distance (MPD) of species assemblages across the globe. Under the assumption that PD reflects the evolutionary history of a species assemblage, a reduction in PD could leave species assemblages more vulnerable to climate change, whilst changes in the average relatedness (MPD) could lead to subsequent changes in the competi- tive balance of species assemblages. We show that SR and PD, which are highly correlated at the global scale, do change in the same direction but not necessarily with the same severity. We 28
highlight areas globally where changes in PD are higher or lower than could be
expected from changes in SR alone. Furthermore we show that heterogeneous
species responses to climate change are leading to a global reshuffling of spe-
cies assemblages, affecting both the PD and MPD of global species communi-
ties. Overall 61 % of the global terrestrial area is projected to have changes in
PD and MPD in the opposite direction, indicating that the communities in this
area do not only change in species numbers but also in species composition.
A global quantitative bioregionalization for plants
(Wednesday 14:30)
Patrick Weigelt, Lirong Cai, Dylan Craven, Wayne Dawson, Franz
Essl, Mark van Kleunen, Christian König, Pavel Krestov, Jan Pergl, Petr
Pyšek, Julian Schrader, Anke Stein, Marten Winter, Qiang Yang, and
Holger Kreft
Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology & Biogeography, University of
Goettingen, Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Distinguishing biogeographic regions helps to understand the dissimilarities
among and uniqueness of the world’s biotas and their evolutionary histories.
Until now, bioregions for plants have been established using expert knowledge
on the composition of regional floras and endemism across different taxonomic
scales (e.g. Takhtajan’s floristic regions of the world). A quantitative delinea-
tion of floristic regions based on an assessment of compositional dissimilarities
across regional floras worldwide is currently lacking. Here, we present a global,
quantitative bioregionalization for all vascular plants. We used regional plant
checklists from the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT; gift.uni-goettin-
gen.de) and a broadly inclusive plant phylogeny to calculate taxonomic and
phylogenetic beta diversity among geographical units. We then used a set of
past and present climatic and physical geographic distances among geograph-
ical units as explanatory variables in generalized dissimilarity models to predict
beta diversity across a global equal-area and equidistant grid. Distances ac-
counted for barriers such as water, mountain ranges and climatically unsuitable
areas between geographical units today and in the past considering plate tec-
tonics and changes in climate. We applied hierarchical clustering algorithms to
delimit different sets of floristic bioregions across the grid and compared them
to established expert-based delineations like Takhktajan’s plant kingdoms, sub-
kingdoms and regions, as well as Wallace’s zoogeographic regions and quanti-
tative reassessments thereof. We propose a new global floristic regionalization
that is broadly similar to established expert-based schemes but quantitatively
derived, which enhances our understanding of regional biogeographic histo-
ries and can be used as a baseline for accounting for biogeographic history in
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