Modelling ecological Interactions, biodiversity and stability

Natural ecosystems exist in a continuously changing environments, often in highly unpredictable and disorderly ways. How species interact, what governs ecosystems’ functioning and how ecosystems maintain a balance in a changeable world are among the key questions of ecology. 

Mathematical models have played a key role in answering these questions. Seminal work in the 1970s showed how random ecosystems would typically become less stable as they become more complex.   However, this leaves open one of the big questions in theoretical ecology:  many species we can expect to find, given the rules of an ecosystem? Recently, significant advances have been booked in solving this question for simple, competitive random ecosystems (Rossberg, Food Webs and Biodiversity, 2013). 

This project aims to investigate the probability that ecosystems are feasible and/or stable and how much biodiversity we can theoretically expect in more complex ecosystems structured by predator-prey and other trophic interactions. 

By studying model ecosystems we can increase our fundamental understanding of how ecosystems function and what determines biodiversity in natural communities are structured by diverse interactions.