PhD defence ceremony – Systemic Risk in Ecosystems
On the 19th of February I successfully defended my PhD thesis entitled ‘Systemic Risk in Ecosystems’ at Wageningen University. A result of many years of hard work in the labs of Jordi Bascompte (ecological networks) and Marten Scheffer (critical transitions). A summary of the thesis can be dowloaded here.
Foreseeing the future of mutualistic communities beyond collapse
‘Foreseeing the future of mutualistic communities beyond collapse’
Gradual changes in environmental conditions may lead to sudden shifts in the state of ecosystems when tipping points are passed. Well-known examples of such ‘transitions’ lead to predictable outcomes such as a turbid lake or a degraded landscape. Not all ecosystems, however, behave in such a predictable way. Many ecosystems consist of many interacting species. When such ‘complex systems’ pass a tipping point, they may shift to many different, alternative states. Whether an impending transition has minor, positive or catastrophic effects is thus unclear. Some complex ecosystems may, however, behave more predictably than others. In Lever et al. (2020), we suggest that the future state of ecosystems in which mutually beneficial relationships are relatively strong can be predicted when studying the way in which a system recovers from small-scale disturbances.
A new challenge
A new challenge
As per September I will follow a one-year course at the University of Cambridge to obtain a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE). I hope it will help me to become a good science educator!
Conservation Science Group
Conservation Science Group, University of Cambridge
On the 16th of January I will give a talk at the Conservation Science Group of the University of Cambridge.
BES Annual meeting
BES Annual meeting
On the 19th of December I will give a talk at the Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society in Birmingham, UK.
Conference on complex systems
Conference on Complex Systems
On the 26th of September I will present my work as a part of the session on ‘Robustness, Adaptability and Critical Transitions in Living Systems’ at the Conference on Complex Systems organised by the Complex Systems Society in Thessaloniki, Greece.
The sudden collapse of …
‘The sudden collapse of pollinator communities’, published in Ecology Letters
Previous work has suggested that the nested structure of mutualistically interacting plant and pollinator species promotes indirect facilitation among pollinator species (Bastolla et al. 2009). Such indirect facilitation may allow pollinator communities to persist under increasingly difficult circumstances. When pollinators continue to facilitate each other under increasingly harsh conditions they may, however, also collapse simultaneously because they depend on each other for survival, as was recently described in Lever et al. (2014), and highlighted in Tylianakis & Coux (2014) and on phys.org.