Spatio-temporal scaling of functional diversity change
Dr Marta Jarzyna1
1The Ohio State University, Columbus, United States
Climate change is an intrinsically non-stationary phenomenon in both space and time. To understand when such spatial and temporal non-stationarity is relevant to ecological systems, one must address the issue of spatio-temporal scale dependence of biodiversity change. Despite this realization, scaling—in terms of both space and time—has to date been rarely investigated. Additionally, studies that place biodiversity change in the scale dependent context almost invariably focus on species richness as the main measure of biodiversity. Species richness, however, does not account for the many different ecological functions of species comprising communities and may thus not account for the implications of biodiversity change for the functioning of ecosystems and their services for humans. Here, I use near-continental data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) and eBird to investigate spatio-temporal scaling of a spectrum of complementary measures of functional diversity change. I quantify avian diversity change across spatial resolution varying from 20 km to the continental US and temporal resolution varying from one week to 50 years. I further explore the climatic drivers of avian diversity change at each of the spatio-temporal scales. This work emphasizes the importance of adopting a scale-explicit framework when assessing biodiversity change resulting from changing climatic conditions.
Biography:
Marta Jarzyna is a macroecologist and global change ecologist interested in understanding the mechanisms relevant to biodiversity dynamics across spatial and temporal scales.
2018-Present: Assistant Professor. Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. The Ohio State University.
2014-2018: Postdoc. Yale University.
2010-2014: Ph.D. Michigan State University.
2001-2006: B.S. & M.S. Warsaw University of Life Sciences.