Our research aims to understand what creates and maintains biodiversity AND how global change alters those relationships as well as what the consequences of biodiversity and changes in biodiversity are for ecosystem function.
Humans are drastically altering the ecological drivers of most ecosystems; climate change is a global phenomenon, historical disturbance regimes are being modified and often times completely eliminated or drastically intensified, and land-use change and invasion are increasingly the norm rather than the exception.
These changes can have drastic consequences for communities on both the local and landscape scale. For example, richness can be lost, species and functional composition can shift, and landscapes can be homogenized.
All these consequences, in turn, affect ecosystem function. Animal communities have numerous ecosystem function including seed dispersal and often control plant biodiversity and plant communities have long been linked to production, stability, and invasion resistance.