Project description
Incorporating intraspecific trait variability into biodiversity predictions
Biodiversity loss is increasing alongside frequent and severe climate extremes, putting ecosystem resilience under pressure. However, current approaches to assessing functional diversity often overlook variation between individuals within the same species. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the IntraDivS project aims to incorporate intraspecific trait variability into functional diversity assessments. It will do this by experimentally disentangling environmental and competitive drivers of trait variation, as well as validating these patterns and scaling them into predictive maps of functional diversity. The project’s goal is to support more effective biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation policies in order to improve predictions of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Objective
Europe is facing accelerating biodiversity loss and increasingly frequent climate extremes, raising urgent questions about the resilience of ecosystems. Functional diversity (FD), which reflects differences in plant strategies for resource use and stress tolerance, is central to predicting biodiversity change and ecosystem functioning under global change. Yet, most current FD assessments assume that individuals within a species are functionally identical, thereby neglecting intraspecific trait variability (ITV). This oversimplification risks biased FD estimates and may misguide conservation investments, particularly as ITV tends to expand under environmental stress. IntraDivS will fill this gap through three complementary steps: i) experimentally disentangling the effects of climate and competition on ITV, ii) testing these responses along European natural gradients, and iii) upscaling the resulting rules into predictive, uncertainty-aware FD maps for Europe. Building on my experimental ecology expertise and leveraging the host group’s unprecedented above- and belowground individual-level trait datasets, together with powerful modelling approaches, I will identify ITV mechanisms and embed them into trait-based biodiversity predictions. The project will deliver the first ITV-explicit functional diversity atlas of Europe, covering both above- and belowground dimensions, and provide high-precision, policy-relevant tools to support the EU Nature Restoration Law and Climate Adaptation Strategy. Hosted at CSIC-MBG under the supervision of Dr. Carmona, a leading figure in trait-based macroecology, I will receive advanced training in functional diversity science and macroecological modelling. The fellowship will consolidate my independence in trait-based ecology, strengthen my leadership experience for securing future funding and launching my career as an internationally recognized researcher.
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- engineering and technology environmental engineering ecosystem-based management climate change adaptation
- social sciences law
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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28006 Madrid
Spain
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