What do galaxies and molecular structures have in common? Or trade between countries, communications on the Internet, and trophic relationships within ecosystems? One answer is that they all involve nodes interconnected by flows of mass and energy. In other words, they are networks. The study of networks has revealed intriguing regularities. For example, it is very common to find networks whose . . . [ Read More ]
Miguel B. Araujo Lab – Resumo de investigação passada e reflexão sobre investigação futura
Quando um leigo me pergunta sobre o objeto da minha investigação, nem sempre é fácil de explicar numa frase. Na verdade, quem trabalha em biodiversidade trabalha com sistemas complexos. Logo, para entender estes sistemas, para os modelar, para projetar dinâmicas futuras, são diversas as ramificações por onde se estende a investigação. Consciente da dificuldade em sintetizar a diversidade muitos . . . [ Read More ]
Climate change adaptation: complexity and uncertainty
I was asked to write an essay about climate change adaptation. The original version can be read here, but I copy below the full text too because the format is not the most user friendly: Adaptação à mudança num contexto de complexidade e incerteza O mundo encontra-se num processo de transformação profunda. Se as alterações climáticas e a perda de biodiversidade globais já estavam na agenda . . . [ Read More ]
Biogeographic analysis of trophic structures reveals the signature of climate and people
Community trophic structure typical of seasonal tropical climates https://youtu.be/1WwGVnNFJOY In Spanish here Climate determines the arquitectures of trophic structures and human activities simplify them. This is the main conclusion of a study published today in Nature Communications, by Manuel Mendoza and Miguel B. Araújo. Using the geographic distributions and feeding . . . [ Read More ]
Postdoc: Modelling food web architectures under climate change
Starting date: July-August 2016 Duration: 36 months Stipend: EUR 1495 per month (free of tax) plus social security. Other subsidies: EUR 750 per year to participate in scientific meetings and conferences, EUR 300-600 for inbound and outbound travelling. Background Can we predict the effects of climate changes on biodiversity? Existing models are based on several weak assumptions, generally . . . [ Read More ]
How complex should models be?
Photo by Stef Lewandowski and licensed under creative commons There is a longstanding discussion about the degree of model complexity that species distributions models have to have in order to maximise the usefulness of the predictions. A discussion that started with observations that more complex models were fitting species distributions data better than simpler models. See for example, . . . [ Read More ]
Are biotic interactions predictable?
UK grassland trophic web. Artwork from food webs.org Even if serious gaps in knowledge of biodiversity remain, much progress has been made in determining how many different types of organisms exist, what evolutionary relationships connect different lineages to a common ancestor, and where different species are distributed. Much less is known about the types of interactions that exist among . . . [ Read More ]
Rogier Hintzen obtained a PhD studentship
Congratulations to Rogier Hintzen who obtained a PhD studentship within Imperial College Doctoral Training Programme on Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet, funded through NERC and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. Rogier's project will focus on improving understanding of complex dynamics of communities under climate change. Rogier will be primarily based at . . . [ Read More ]