Integrating processes across scales to understand and predict ecological dynamics in landscapes

Project Information

SCALED

Grant agreement ID: 949812

DOI

10.3030/949812

EC signature date 26 October 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 978,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 978,00

Coordinated by

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SCALED (Integrating processes across scales to understand and predict ecological dynamics in landscapes)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Habitat loss is undoubtedly the greatest threat to the world’s biodiversity, the very foundation of our life-supporting system. As human activities involve increasing transformed areas, the opportunities for preserving large areas of natural habitats are becoming limited. The best conservation option thus lies in conserving connected networks of small pieces of habitats. Organisms should therefore be able to move within the network, to sustain their everyday needs (food, mates) and fulfil their entire life cycles over the long-term. The spatial organisation of the remaining habitats (configuration) and the ability for organisms to move among habitat remnants in the landscape (matrix permeability) are therefore critical variables. However, the management of theses variables (configuration and matrix permeability) along with the amount of habitat has been the subject of debate among scientists since the 1970s, limiting the possibilities for appropriate decision support in spatial planning. Facing the current dramatic decline of biodiversity, resolving this debate has become critical, and this is the objective of the SCALED project.

SCALED investigates key ecological processes – such as the movement of organisms and population dynamics – for multiple organisms and at multiple spatial scales to: 1) understand the circumstances under which different habitat configurations - at fixed habitat amount - can lead to higher or lower levels of biodiversity (species diversity and population survival); 2) understand and quantify the role of matrix permeability - at fixed habitat amount and habitat configuration – in shaping biodiversity in landscapes; and to 3) generalize and predict how habitat amount, habitat configuration and matrix resistance affect biodiversity with trait-based and process-based modelling. SCALED is organised in four working platforms.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

MINILANDS is a set of microcosm experiments conducted in the lab with micro-arthropods (Collembola) in artificial landscapes at the centimetre scale. To properly design the landscape-scale experiments, we ran different tests to 1) define the movement abilities of the micro-arthropods on different types of material, 2) to quantify reproduction rates and population carrying capacities on different types of food resources (tree leaf litter). Landscape-scale experiments are now being run in the lab.

MESOLANDS is a landscape-scale in situ experiment set up in an area of formerly cultivated dry grassland with a high stone cover. Twenty-three enclosures, called landscapes, were set up in which the arthropod responses to treatments were monitored. Treatments include a double gradient of habitat amount and habitat fragmentation. To simulate habitat loss, we have removed the stone cover to delimit areas of bare soil, less favourable for arthropods. Every year, we monitor the arthropod communities to see how they respond to the experimental habitat loss and fragmentation. To better understand how arthropods move in the field and how changes in their habitat may influence their movements, we tracked three beetle species with RFID tags for 48h. Our work has shown that the methodology is effective for these species, with limitations in terms of spatial and temporal coverage and resolution. We are currently developing a new method to overcome these limits.

MACROLANDS is an in situ observation network of gene flow of the European red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) at the km scale. Here we want to perform landscape genetic analyses in order to relate the squirrel gene fluxes, a common species, with the spatial organisation of forested habitats in our study landscapes. Genetic analyses are performed on hair samples collected with passive baited hair traps, a non-invasive technique to collect a sample of few hairs without capturing the animals. We have developed an intensive sampling scheme (930 hair tubes installed) in five different landscapes and already collected 330 samples.

MODEL is an individual-based, process-based, spatially and temporally explicit predictive modelling tool that will translate the mechanistic understanding gained from our three empirical platforms into computer-based simulations. We first apply the model to MACROLANDS with the objective to properly map the suitable habitat for the red squirrel and delimit the habitat patches as an entry to the model.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

SCALED combines a set of multi-scale innovative empirical experiments to disentangle the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation.

In SCALED, we: 1) propose a new conceptual approach to address the current “fragmentation” debate, 2) work on a comprehensive test of this conceptual approach at different scales and with different organisms; we investigate the same question at several scales and for different organisms to gain in generality, 3) combine field and lab work with a modelling approach to tackle predictability, 4) develop innovative methodologies and tools to gain in efficiency when monitoring ecological processes at landscape-scale, for instance by improving spatial and temporal coverage and resolution of advanced tools including landscape genetics and movement telemetry, 5) implement very ambitious monitoring and sampling designs both in the lab and in the field.

SCALED will thus offer a unique opportunity to validate our predictive and conceptual models with unprecedented observations of movement, demographic and species-interaction processes under crossed conditions of habitat amount, habitat configuration and matrix resistance. SCALED can also bring wide applications, because public and private land planners deeply need effective decision guidelines and readily usable tools able to bring scientific support to land planning decision-making.

logo of the SCALED project