Project description
Understanding assembly rules and community change
Community assembly patterns reveal the processes that form the identity and population of species within ecological communities. To fully understand assembly rules and community changes, we need to take into consideration a wide range of interrelated factors. However, communities are extremely complex, enclosing thousands of species and millions of interspecific interactions, and future scenarios do not address the chaotic systems where even small changes can generate unpredictable consequences. The EU-funded CAWEB project will use cave communities to investigate the eco-evolutionary processes that form functional and taxonomic diversity in subterranean spider communities on a continental scale. By combining pioneering algorithms and computer simulations, the project will model assembly rules and future change in space and time and investigate climate change impact predictions.
Objective
Community assembly, how they change in space and time, and how they will be affected by global threats, is one of the most pressing issues in ecology and conservation biology. To fully understand assembly rules and community change, one has to delve into multiple interrelated factors, such as the history of environmental and habitat changes in the past, current biotic and abiotic factors, spatial constraints and future scenarios for all these. Yet, two factors have prevented us from obtaining a complete picture for any organism. First, communities are extremely complex, typically encompassing thousands of species and millions of interspecific interactions. Second, future scenarios are overwhelming to model without the challenge of dealing with chaotic systems, where even small changes can lead to large, unpredictable, consequences. Here, I propose to use cave communities as the simplest and easiest setting to model assembly rules and future change across space and time. Caves offer unique opportunities for eco-evolutionary studies because they are characterized by a low abundance and diversity of organisms and interactions, they receive limited external inputs and are easily modelled. By combining a range of state-of-art algorithms and computer simulations, I will investigate the eco-evolutionary processes that shape functional and taxonomic diversity in subterranean spider communities at a continental scale, as well as the sensitivity of specialised species to climate alterations. I will rely on extensive datasets already collected and try to answer the question: what drives community assembly across space and time, and how can we predict the consequences of climate change on current biomes?. The project will be implemented at the Finnish Natural History Museum, and will be supervised by Dr Pedro Cardoso. An intersectoral secondment in mechanistic modelling at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, supervised by Prof Volker Grimm, is also anticipated.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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.
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.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics mathematical model
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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.
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.
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
00014 HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Finland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.