Seminar of the Department of Botany and Centre of Excellence EcolChange
Speaker: Dr. Carlos Pérez Carmona is an Associate Professor in the Macroecology workgroup at the University of Tartu. He is combining analytical tools with experimental approaches to study variation in species traits.
Title of the talk: Mapping and exploring the functional spectra across the tree of life
Time: Thursday, 25 February 2021 at 14.15
Place: Virtual seminar in Zoom
Summary: From tiny shrews and duckweeds to gigantic whales and sequoias, the extent of trait variation among organisms on Earth is extraordinary. Despite all this functional diversity, species’ ecological strategies resulting from trait combinations are constrained by physiological limits set by evolutionary history and trade-offs in resource allocation. Aiming to understand what are the main dimensions of functional variation and how species are organized within them, ecologists have recently started mapping the functional spectra of different taxonomic groups. In this seminar I will provide an overview of our most recent research undertakings, where we strive to incorporate fine root traits into the global spectrum of plant form and function, define the functional spectra of vertebrate species at different scales, and understand how they could be affected by future extinctions.
EcolChange 