From new methods to new insights: Advancing palaeoecology with @PalaeoNick

September 21, 2022
WDG

During the delivery of this years BSc Palaeoeclogy course at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) I discussed with a number of students about the nature and purpose of understanding the ecology of the past. This lead me to highlighting the research of Nick Loughlin (@PalaeoNick) from his PhD at The Open University and the subsequent work that he has done. I though it might be interesting to also share this here…

Nick recovers a sediment core for his PhD project.
Nick Loughlin during his PhD field work in Ecuador

Nick’s study sought to understand better the ecological history of the biodiverse eastern Andean flank in Ecuador. To achieve this he went into the field and recovered sediments from a lake and a sedimentary section exposed by a road cutting. He analysed the sediments to reveal vegetation change (pollen analysis), fire histories (charcoal analysis), and past animals in the landscape (non-pollen palynomorphs, or NPPs). To extract extra ecological information from his samples he developed the methodological approach for examining NPPs in a tropical setting (Loughlin et al. 2018a). He then combined all the different palaeoecological approaches to reveal the drivers of vegetation change during the last glacial period (in the absence of humans; Loughlin et al. 2018b), and during the last 1000 years (when indigenous and European human populations radically altered the landscape; Loughlin et al. 2018c). The insights gained from Nicks research provided empirical evidence of how humans have been modifying this biodiversity hotspot on the timescales relevant to the lifecycles of tropical trees. These findings and ideas were collated in his PhD Thesis at The Open University which was supervised by Encarni Montoya, Angela Coe and myself (Loughlin, 2018a). Subsequently, Nick has been working to broaden the impact of his work and to communicate his findings to the broader scientific and conservation community. This has lead to two new publications focused on understanding baseline ecological function and conservation implications (Loughlin et al. 2022, Nogué et al. 2022).

Lake Huila
Evidence of past ecological change recovered from Lake Huila (Ecuador) revealed how past peoples had modified the landscape of the eastern Andean biodiversity hotspot.

The arch of research carried out by Nick, I think, really demonstrates the important of understanding the ecology of the past – without his detailed investigation of microfossils we could not have seen the impacts of indigenous communities on the past Andean landscape, or identify the consequences of the European depopulation; or been able to estimate the timescales of the ecological change!

References

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Professor of Marine Palaeobiodiversity

October 8, 2020
WDG

Prof. dr. Willem Renema

Prof. dr. Willem Renema Special Chair in Marine Palaeobiodiversity

Willem Renema, head of the Marine Biodiversity research group at Naturalis, has been appointed as a Special Chair in Marine Palaeobiodiversity within the Department of Ecosystem & Landscape Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam. I am delighted that Willem has joined the team coupling his expertise in marine tropical systems with our existing focus on terrestrial tropical settings will, I am sure, provide many new avenues of scientific endeavour. Catalysing collaboration between Naturalis and UvA will be five PhD researchers, employed on the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network, who will be jointly supervised by Naturalis and UvA staff. 

  • To find out more about Willem and his appointment click here.
  • To visit Willem’s Naturalis web site click here.
  • To find out more about 4D-Reef click here.

Job: Post-doc “Digital Environmental Sustainability”

September 28, 2020
WDG

Do you have a PhD in Physical Geography, Environmental Sciences, Landscape Ecology or Soil Ecology? Have you got educational and research experience working with digital data to contribute to climate, geographic or biodiversity science? If so please consider applying for the 4-year post-doctoral position “Digital Environmental Sustainability” currently available within the Department of Ecosystem & Landscape Dynamics (Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam).

Closing data: 29 November 2020

For full information click here.

Meet team “Global change & vegetation dynamics” @ Plant Ecology & Diversity

August 4, 2020
WDG

Plant Ecology & DiversityWithin the overarching context of Plant Ecology & Diversity the “Global change & vegetation dynamics” subject area aims to place a temporal component on key themes such as biodiversity, conservation and ecosystem function. Manuscripts are welcome that use long-term (palaeo-) ecological approaches, modern field observations and laboratory experiments, and computational modelling to explore change and dynamics within ecosystems. We welcome all formats of manuscripts to this section (original research articles rapid communication articles, review articles, and perspectives articles). If you have any questions about the potential suitability of your research in the journal please do not hesitate to get in contact.

The editorial team handling this section of the journal currently comprises myself as Subject Editor and six Associate Editors. To find out more about us, our research interests and expertise read on…

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Identifying drivers of forest resilience in long-term records from the Neotropics on ALPHA’s lab meeting

August 4, 2020
Majoi Nascimento

Hello everyone,

My name is Majoi Nascimento, I just started a new job as a postdoc researcher at the University of Amsterdam working on an ERC project named ALPHA (Assessing Legacies of Past Human Activities in Amazonia with Crystal McMichael). The main focus of ALPHA is to investigate the role of human disturbance and recovery processes that have occurred over the past few millennia in Amazonia, and their effects on the biodiversity and carbon dynamics that are observed there today. To do a good job, it is important that we understand the concepts of disturbance and recovery, but also the processes that underlie forest resilience. That is the reason why we decided to read and discuss this work from Adolf et al. 2020 “Identifying drivers of forest resilience in long-term records from the Neotropics”, published in the journal Biology Letters, during one of our lab meetings.

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JOB: Post-doctoral researcher in Global Ecology

June 7, 2019
WDG

Post-doctoral researcher in Global Ecology
Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED)
University of Amsterdam
Deadline: 14 july 2019

There is a 18 month post-doctoral research position within the Department of Theoretical & Computational Ecology at IBED focused on Global Ecology, we are looking for someone with skills and experience the following areas:

  • PhD in ecology, biodiversity or a related discipline
  • quantitative skills and statistical analyses
  • species distribution modelling
  • analyses of species composition, functional traits and species interactions

For further details and how to apply click here, or contact Daniel Kissling

Cloudy with a chance of adventure

April 8, 2019
WDG

Rachel Sales, Bryan Valencia, and Majoi de Novaes Nascimento coring a different lake. In this picture, we have just pulled a core of mud up from the bottom of the lake. Photo credit: Seringe Huisman

Rachel Sales, Bryan Valencia, and Majoi de Novaes Nascimento coring a different lake. In this picture, we have just pulled a core of mud up from the bottom of the lake. Photo credit: Seringe Huisman

Cloudy with a chance of adventure
By Rachel Sales (PhD researcher at the Institute for Global Ecology, Florida Institute of Technology)

I am sitting on the shore of Lago Condorcillo in Southern Ecuador, after a long day of travel, trying to control my shivering. At roughly 10,500 ft. above sea level, the lake is very cold, with wind that howls over the barren hills dotted with giant boulders. The lake is also almost always blanketed by thick fog and pelted by driving rain. When you’re surrounded by the thick fog punctuated by lightning bolts, it’s easy to believe that some lost civilization lurks just out of sight. Tonight we are experiencing lightning storms, which is adding to the feeling that some angry, ancient life form must live at Lago Condorcillo.

Tomorrow, I will be out in the cold and rain, balancing on an inflatable boat and fighting frostbite. Mark Bush, who is my Ph.D. advisor, Courtney Shadik, who is my lab partner and tent buddy, and I will be collecting cores of mud from the bottom of Condorcillo. We will create our rig for coring by tying two inflatable boats together, and placing a wooden platform between them. Mark, Courtney, and I will then collect our mud cores from this platform.

As I’m contemplating the hazards of camping in a lightning storm, Mark says, “Tell me everything that went wrong today.” Courtney pulls a sleeping bag closer to her. I begin to describe how Google Maps can’t seem to understand distance in the Andes, and so traveling to Lago Condorcillo took much longer than we anticipated. Courtney laughs beside me and adds, “We don’t have any matches to start a fire.” Despite our troubles, I am grinning from ear to ear, no doubt spoiling the grim mood Mark is attempting to cultivate and Lago Condorcillo is doing its best to enforce.

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Plant Ecology & Diversity

February 22, 2019
WDG

I recently joined the editorial board of Plant Ecology & Diversity at the invitation of editor-in-chief Laszlo Nagy (University of  Campinas, Brazil). The journal focuses on ecological and evolutionary issues within plant biology with broad themes covering biodiversity, conservation and global change. Furthermore, I think this is a particularly interesting journal to be involved with because of its option for double-blind peer reviews, commitment to providing a platform for ‘negative results’ and ‘repeat experiments’, and its open access Grubb Review series (Nagy & Resco de Dios, 2016); which already includes many significant articles, including: Ashton (2017), Barbeta & Peñuelas (2016), Grubb (2016), Körner (2018), Valladares et al. (2016), and Wilkinson & Sherratt (2016). In addition to the invited Grubb Reviews the journal publishes: research articles, short communications, reviews, and scientific correspondence. My role on the editorial board will be to cover submissions related to tropical palaeoecology and biogeography. So please consider submitting to Plant Ecology & Diversity if you have some exciting new research or ideas that you think would be appropriate.

 

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Indicators for assessing tropical alpine rehabilitation practices

February 8, 2019
WDG

Open access:

Duchicela, S.A., Cuesta, F., Pinto, E., Gosling, W.D. & Young, K.R. (2019) Indicators for assessing tropical alpine rehabilitation practices. Ecosphere 10, e02595. DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.2595

Job: MacGillavry Fellowship

December 20, 2018
WDG

The Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam has just announced the third round of MacGillavry Fellowships. These are tenure track positions (6 years) for talented female researchers. Applicants can apply in six different fields including “Biodiversity & Earth Sciences” this field encompasses all activity within the Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics.

Email me for informal discussions of applications related to Ecosystem & Landscape Dynamics.

To find out more and how to apply click here.

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