Our research interests focus on how biodiversity is maintained, how it is lost, and the consequences for the functioning of ecosystems and the provision of ecological services. We currently investigate these questions mainly in grassland and tropical forest ecosystems. Our approach is to test hypotheses derived from ecological theory using experimental and observational techniques and modern statistical methods.

Former Head of Group: Prof. Dr. Andrew Hector

Research Themes:

• The Sabah Biodiversity Experiment: Investigating forest ecosystem services
• The maintenance and loss of grassland biodiversity through competition, resource partitioning and facilitation
• Diversity and stability: The resistance, resilience and temporal and spatial stability of ecosystem processes
• Bio-statistics: Simple mechanistic and semi-mechanistic statistical models of plant growth