Department of Conservation Biology
Working group - Conservation Oriented Population Ecology - COPE
The unprecedented expansion of human activities across the globe leads to an ever-increasing loss of natural habitats, their fragmentation and degradation. In addition, natural resources are overexploited which contributes to the destabilization of ecosystems. In addition, climate change is putting every ecosystem under stress. Together, these anthropogenic pressures threaten biodiversity in general and not every species can easily cope with them; only through great effort and by means of appropriate measures can the decline in biodiversity be halted. However, for the application of such measures, many factors influencing species survival under habitat loss, overexploitation and climate change need to be considered simultaneously. These include environmental factors such as spatio-temporal stochasticity, spatial extent and the quality of remaining habitats. Finally, biological factors such as species mobility, evolutionary potential and their population parameters interact with these anthropogenic drives. Advancing the protection of species in changing landscapes therefore requires better understanding of animal-landscape interactions - taking place at the individual, population and landscape levels - and how these scale up.
One of the WG's fields of work is the analysis of different land use strategies and their effects on the population dynamics of certain animal species.
Drawing: Bianca Bauch
The research group COPE focuses on the study of the effects of multiple anthropogenic drivers on biodiversity, at different temporal and spatial scales (local, landscape, regional) and through different levels of biological organization (species, populations, communities). Among the main drivers of transformed natural conditions we study invasive species, international trade in species, climate change and habitat loss due to land use change. Our main goal is to understand the ecological processes behind observed patterns of species occurrence, abundance, distribution and composition, including species' status and trends, risk assessments and the consequences of over-exploitation of species - as well as the consequences of uncertainty. Key issues in our studies include species' traits and environmental responses; animal movement and dispersal (connectivity), population dynamics, strategies to cope with these changes, but also physiology and phylogenetics.
We try to provide recommendations for nature conservation and international species protection (e.g. under which scenarios a sustainable use of natural resources could take place), but also methods for optimising and implementing monitoring for local, national and global actors. Furthermore, we try to understand local conservation conflicts that may arise due to changes in the occurrence of different species and to minimise them by means of suitable planning instruments.An important part of the COPE research group is the survey and monitoring of different animal and plant species. For this purpose, we use a variety of survey methods, including Citizen Science, wildlife detection dogs, ID-tracking and eDNA. We try to find suitable combinations of methods and also advise other institutions on the choice of suitable survey methods.
Group members
Guest scientists
Alumni
Wildlife Detection Dogs
We also have four-legged employees in our WG. You can find more information about this here.
Current projects
Grimm-Seyfarth A, Mihoub J-B, Gruber B, Henle, K, (2018): Some like it hot: from individual to population responses of an arboreal arid‐zone gecko to local and distant climate. Ecol. Monogr. 88 (3), 336 - 352
Haase P, Tonkin J D, Stoll S, Burkhardt B, Frenzel M, Geijzendorffer I R, Häuser C, Klotz S, Kühn I, McDowell W H, Mirtl M, Müller F, Musche M, Penner J, Zacharias S, Schmeller D S (2018): The next generation of site-based long-term ecological monitoring: Linking essential biodiversity variables and ecosystem integrity. Sci. Total Environ. 613–614 , 1376 - 1384
Dislich C, Keyel A C, Salecker J, Kisel Y, Meyer K M, Auliya M, Barnes A D, Corre M D, Darras K, Faust H, Hess B, Klasen S, Knohl A, Kreft H, Meijide A, Nurdiansyah F, Otten F, Pe'er G, Steinebach S, Tarigan S, Tölle M H, Tscharntke T, Wiegand K (2017): A review of the ecosystem functions in oil palm plantations, using forests as a reference system. Biol. Rev. 92 (3), 1539 - 1569
Grimm-Seyfarth A, Mihoub J-B, Henle K (2017): Too hot to die? The effects of vegetation shading on past, present, and future activity budgets of two diurnal skinks from arid Australia. Ecol. Evol. 7 (17), 6803 - 6813
Gunton R M, Marsh C J, Moulherat S, Malchow A-K, Bocedi G, Klenke R A, Kunin W E (2017):
Multicriterion trade-offs and synergies for spatial conservation planning. J. Appl. Ecol. 54 (3), 903 - 913
Menger J, Unrein J, Woitow M, Schlegel M, Henle K, Magnusson WE. 2017. Weak evidence for fine-scale genetic spatial structure in three sedentary Amazonian understorey birds. Journal of Ornithology doi: 10.1007/s10336-017-1507-y
Henle K, Andres C, Bernhard D, Grimm A, Stoev P, Tzankov N, Schlegel M (2017): Are species genetically more sensitive to habitat fragmentation on the periphery of their range compared to the core? A case study on the sand lizard (Lacerta agilis). Landsc. Ecol. 32 (1), 131 - 145
Hofmann S, Everaars J, Frenzel M, Bannehr L, Cord A F (2017): Modelling patterns of pollinator species richness and diversity using satellite image texture. PLOS One 12 (10), e0185591
Jeliazkov A, Bas Y, Kerbiriou Ch, Julien J-F, Penone C, Le Viol I (2016) Large-scale semi-automated acoustic monitoring allows to detect temporal decline of bush-crickets, Global Ecology and Conservation 6, 208-218
Ferreira C, Bastille-Rousseau G, Bennett A, Ellington H, Terwissen C, Austin C, Borlestean A, Boudreau M, Chan K, Forsythe A, Hossie T, Landolt K, Longhi J, Otis J A, Peers M, Rae J, Seguin J, Watt C, Wehtje M, Murray D L (2016): The evolution of peer review as a basis for publication in ecology: Directional selection towards a robust discipline. Biological Reviews 91: 597–610.