Predictive Ecology

The Predictive Ecology Group aims to advance ecology as a predictive science. Doing so requires understanding the processes that determine population, community, and ecosystem dynamics; processes such as predation, competition, adaptation, environmental change, and chance. We use experiments with field and laboratory communities, mathematical modelling, and analyses of macro-scale datasets. We are also interested in developing simple and intuitive methods for communicating ecological predictions.

Head of group: Prof. Dr. Owen Petchey

Research themes

• Predicting the consequences of environmental change for populations, communities and ecosystems. For example, predicting how temperature affects food webs, how land use change affects carbon storage, and how multiple environmental changes combine.
• Predicting extinctions: theoretical modelling of extinction time distributions, experimental tests of theory, experimental extinctions in model and natural communities
• Understanding the determinants of whether we can make useful predictions about ecological systems.