北京大学定量生物学中心/生命科学联合中心

学术报告 

题    目: Biodiversity and the stability of ecological systems: resolving an old debate

报告人:  Professor Michel Loreau

Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, Moulis, France

Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Member of the Academia Europaea, Honorary Member of the British Ecological Society

时  间: 4月25日（周四）13:00-14:00

地    点: 金光生命科学大楼101（邓祐才报告厅）

主持人: 李志远 研究员

摘要:

      The relationship between the diversity and stability of ecological systems has been the subject of a long-standing debate. But recent studies have led to the development of a new body of theory that is profoundly changing our views of both ecological stability and its relationships with biodiversity.

      This body of theory shows that dynamical stability should be fully embraced as a multidimensional concept. In particular, temporal invariability is an integrative and empirically relevant measure of stability that can resolve many of the apparent discrepancies between theory and observations. Theory predicts that different types of perturbations and different observed variables should yield qualitatively different diversity–stability relationships, in agreement with empirical and experimental data.

      This body of theory has also greatly increased our mechanistic understanding of the ecological processes that generate positive effects of biodiversity on ecosystem stability. Asynchrony of species’ responses to environmental fluctuations is the most common mechanism underlying these effects, but additional factors can also come into play.

      An exciting extension of this body of theory is the development of new approaches to study the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem stability across spatial scales. These approaches again highlight the key role played by asynchrony between species and across space in ecosystem stability at large spatial scales.

      Ecology now has a powerful set of theoretical approaches and predictions that can be connected to experimental and observational data across multiple organisational levels and spatial scales. This is a unique strength, which hopefully will open a new area of rigorous quantitative research into the stability of ecological and other biological systems.

报告人简介：

Michel Loreau is emeritus researcher at the Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Moulis (France) and adjunct professor at Peking University (Beijing, China). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the Academia Europaea, an honorary member of the British Ecological Society. He is currently a member of the editorial and advisory boards of PLoS Biology, head of the section Community Ecology and Biodiversity of The Faculty of 1000, and recommender of PCIEcology.

Michel Loreau is the author of over 400 scientific publications, among which 10 books and numerous papers in the top disciplinary and multidisciplinary journals (9 in Nature, 15 in other Nature journals, 8 in Science, 11 in PNAS, 39 in Ecology Letters, ect). His research goal is to build the theoretical foundations of a new ecological synthesis that integrates the divergent perspectives of community ecology, evolutionary ecology and ecosystem ecology.  He attaches great importance to a tight interaction between the mathematical models he develops and empirical or experimental work on a wide range of ecosystems.

His main research theme during the past twenty years has been the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and the ecological and societal consequences of biodiversity loss. He has also laid the theoretical foundations of three new research fields that address the spatial, evolutionary and societal dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: metacommunity and metaecosystem ecology, evolutionary ecosystem ecology, and the dynamics and sustainability of human-nature interactions. Lastly, he has championed an integrative biodiversity science that transcends disciplinary boundaries.

His work has exerted a profound influence over the development of ecology during the last decades. Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics ranked him among the world’s most highly cited researchers in the field of environment and ecology for sixteen years.