Modelling the distribution of biodiversity under global change
The course will provide students training in the scope of macroecology and bioclimatic modelling to infer and discuss the interactions and potential impacts of global climate changes (past, ongoing and future) on the different levels of marine biodiversity (i.e., from genes to ecosystems). It is mostly hands-on oriented, with a strong component on biodiversity and climatic data acquisition, management and visualisation (e.g., the new Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios of climate change), as well as on ecological and species distribution modelling using state of the art algorithms (e.g., machine learning).
Students will be motivated to bring their own datasets.
The course is organized in three parts:
Part 1 consists of lectures and hands-on oriented coding in R computing language, estimated to 40 hours.
Part 2 consists of a written assignment that is an individual research study addressing (1) the interactions between, or (2) the impacts of, global climate changes on marine biodiversity, estimated at 40 hours.
Part 3 consists of an oral plenary presentation based on the individual assignment; estimated at 20 hours. Total workload estimated to approximately 120 hours including assignment preparations.
Knowledge
The candidate should:
• Be at the forefront of knowledge within the academic field of biodiversity modelling
• Have theoretical knowledge of major aspects of how the environment and climate change affects biodiversity,
• Be able to understand and communicate current theory and information related to the effect of macroscale environmental conditions and climate change on biodiversity
• Be able of judging the implications of research methods and processes, and to understand how biodiversity does and will respond to changing environmental conditions and climate.
Skills
The candidate should be able to:
- Extract, manage and visualize marine biodiversity and bioclimatic data;
- Use niche theory to develop mechanistic and correlative (e.g., machine learning) bioclimatic models;
- Discuss the strengths and limitations of bioclimatic models at biogeographical scales, as well as the concept of transferability across space and time;
- Discuss good practice bioclimatic modelling for proper parameterization and evaluation of predictive performances;
- Integrate physiological information into hybrid modelling to improve transferability;
- Project the potential consequences of global climate changes to marine biodiversity;
- Predict potential invasive processes;
- Use ecological niche overlap analyses to infer potential drivers of niche evolution and diversification.
- Discuss the results of bioclimatic modelling and the impacts of climate change on the distribution and evolutionary processes of marine biodiversity, and defend them to a wide audience (e.g., publishing scientific manuscripts and technical reports).
General competence
The candidate should:
• Be able to disseminate and communicate the research field of climate change effects on biodiversity through appropriate national and international channels to ensure knowledge-sharing with the community at large
• Be able to communicate how past and future predictions of the geographic and environmental distribution of aspects of biodiversity can and have been researched
• Be able to engage in debates on how climate influences biodiversity and biogeography in relevant forums
• Share knowledge and protect it where necessary following internationally accepted guidelines and regulations
