What makes some species prone to extinction? What determines the time when a species is likely to go extinct? What are the consequences of extinction for the remaining species? How will environmental change influence extinctions and their consequences? These and other questions about extinctions and environmental change provide the general motivation for our research. We use experiments with field and laboratory communities, mathematical modelling, and analyses of macro-scale datasets to ultimately provide an integrative understanding that spans from individuals up to ecosystems.

Research themes

• Food web ecology: modelling food web structure, size structure in food webs, extinctions in food webs, food webs of parasites/pathogens in mice and humans, effects of temperature on food web structure
• Predicting extinctions: theoretical modelling of extinction time distributions, experimental tests of theory, experimental extinctions in model and natural communities
• Measuring biodiversity: analyses of plant and bird biodiversity drivers, consequences of extinction for biodiversity and ecosystem processes

Group members

Head of the group: Prof. Owen Petchey