Biodiversity & Biotic Interactions - BIOTIC

Coordinators :  
Dr. Stephan Jacquet, Research Director 
Dr. Victor Frossard, Assistant Professor 

BIOTIC aims at addressing the role of biodiversity, its associated the functions and processes, and its responses (from intra-specific to community level) to anthropogenic and climate forcings.

Lakes shelter a flourishing biodiversity that supports important ecosystem services to human societies. The comprehensive characterization of this aquatic biodiversity is still a first challenge due to the miscellaneous organism groups spanning a wide range of sizes (µm to m) associated to diversified life stages. Predicting future trends of this biodiversity represents another major research challenge, as species dynamics are constrained by multiple types of direct and indirect ecological interactions that can vary over time. Biodiversity changes and their responses to different environmental and anthropogenic stressors are addressed over different time-scales for a comprehensive assessment of their relative influences and the establishment of ecological references. The explicit consideration of the specificities and couplings between the different biotic compartments (within and between benthic and pelagic zones) represents a final challenge for a global understanding of the lake functioning at the ecosystem scale. To address these challenges, various research projects are conducted around two majors and intersecting themes: Characterizing the biodiversity and associated functions & Assessing the drivers of biodiversity. In other words, BIOTIC aims at (i) addressing and integrating the diversity and the role of biotic interactions in models of lake ecosystem functioning, and (ii) studying and analyzing the responses of species/populations/communities to multiple stressors in order to discriminate local and global forcings. Ongoing Projects