Assoc. Prof. Dr. Xiaojuan Liu
liuxiaojuan06@ibcas.ac.cn
Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Using functional traits to understand forest community assembly

Understanding the assembly and dynamics of forest ecological communities is a central focus in ecology. From a trait-based perspective, we evaluated the importance of different community assembly mechanisms at multiple scales. As community is ultimately governed by demographic performance, we also identified the relative influence of the abiotic and biotic environment and the aspects of organismal form and function to the individual performance with the data from both natural and manipulative forest, which up to produce the emergent patterns of community assembly and dynamics. Overall, we found functional trait and trait–performance relationships at individual level could greatly improve the understanding of forest community assembly.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Douglas Chesters
dchesters@ioz.ac.cn
Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences/ Sabbatical Professor at sDiv

Integrating phylogenetic information in community ecology and biography of insects

Genetic data contains valuable information on taxonomy, species boundaries and evolution. Although the tremendous diversity and incomplete knowledge of insects in particular present some challenges, which mean that these data have not been well exploited in ecology and biogeography. I report on some of the varied information that can be extracted from molecular data, but also how we might approach the challenges in integration of DNA barcodes and omics data in the context of insect community ecology. Case studies include caterpillar and ants occurring in the BEF-China tree diversity experiment.