Evolving Metacommunities

Photo: © Joachim Mergeay

The research interests of the team are very broad and range from general aquatic ecology of ponds and shallow lakes and biodiversity research to community ecology, evolutionary ecology and ecological genomics. The unique signature of the team is, however, that it brings together all these disciplines to better understand how the interaction between ecological and evolutionary processes in space shape the response of aquatic systems and their biota to global change. Model systems are pond, zooplankton, microbial communities and the water flea Daphnia. We believe that the concept of evolving metacommunities – studying both evolutionary trait change and community dynamics in landscapes – is a powerful and exciting framework to study how communities and ecosystems respond to environmental change, including human-induced ones such as urbanization, climate change, intensive agriculture and nature management.

The team at IGB is still new and growing. For more information on the team at KUL euven please check > https://bio.kuleuven.be/eeb/ldm