Research

Understanding fundamental dynamics that shape species geographic distributions is critical for predicting responses to global change and disentangling factors that generate and maintain global biodiversity patterns. In our research, we work in diverse systems, from plants through birds and mammals to humans, to reveal how species persist and coexist across diverse and dynamic environments to understand the distribution of life. Often taking a perspective macroecological in scope, we bridge scales of biological organization – from physiology, traits, and behavior of individuals to spatiotemporal dynamics of populations to the distributions of species and assembly of communities across and among continents. We primarily address questions by leveraging large datasets unified across disparate sources and the creative application of computational and statistical techniques.

The distribution of life in the Anthropocene is inextricably linked to human activities and our synthetic, big data approach provides a potent means of documenting and understanding the consequences of global change processes that are playing out over multiple scales (e.g. climate change, urbanization, biological invasions).

Current research directions are outlined below. If you would like to learn more, please feel free to contact.

Environmental opportunity and the shape of functional diversity

A fundamental problem in ecology is to understand how species traits and environmental conditions interact to determine species distributions. These interactions often occur as eco-evolutionary feedbacks: certain environments can select for particular traits but trait evolution can also facilitate expansion into new environments. We explore these dynamics through the use of physiological models, by investigating population responses to environmental change, and with phylogenetic comparative methods applied to large, often globally distributed, samples of species. In particular, we are interested in how adaptations in varied traits such as brain size or thermal physiology can help species to cope with extreme or fluctuating environmental conditions.

Selected publications:

Energetic constraints and species coexistence

Tracking the currency of energy, we seek to disentangle how resources are allocated among species to generate biodiversity. Work in this area often takes advantage of temperate bird communities as a convenient study system because they are well documented by community science programs such as the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, and eBird. In addition, migratory birds can drastically change community composition across seasonal cycles, providing a unique opportunity to test ecological drivers of diversity. We are interested in understanding how resource dynamics and the availability of ecological opportunities influence functional diversity and community structure to shape macroecological energy-richness relationships

Ongoing anthropogenic processes are altering resources and landscapes, providing opportunities to better understand the processes that structure community composition. Focusing on urbanization, we are interested in mechanisms driving change in continental scale biodiversity patterns. While this approach can be leveraged to reveal insights into fundamental ecological processes, it also has the potential to inform conservation and mitigate the effects of human impacts on natural communities.

Selected publications and presentations:

The macroecology of invasions

Determining factors that mediate species responses to ongoing anthropogenic change is crucial for informing conservation, but also provides unique opportunities to investigate the fundamental processes structuring distributions and diversity. Taking this perspective, we conduct research that harnesses alien species as a study system for determining the causes and consequences of success during range expansions. Our work is particularly interested in using information from both alien and native distributions to better understand and predict invasion processes during both anthropogenic (species introductions) and natural (continental interchanges) biotic exchanges.

Selected publications and presentations:

  • Fristoe, Trevor S, Jonas Bleilevens, Nicole L. Kinlock, Qiang Yang, Zhijie Zhang, Wayne Dawson, Franz Essl, Holger Kreft, Jan Pergl, Petr Pyšek, Patrick Weigelt, Jean-Marc Dufour-Dror, Alexander N. Sennikov, Pawel Wasowicz, Kristine B Westergaard, and Mark van Kleunen. 2023. Evolutionary imbalance, climate and human history jointly shape the global biogeography of alien plants. Nature Ecology and Evolution: 1-12
  • Fristoe, Trevor S, Milan Chytrý, Wayne Dawson, Franz Essl, Ruben Heleno, Holger Kreft, Noëlie Maurel, Jan Pergl, Petr Pyšek, Hanno Seebens, Patrick Weigelt, Pablo Vargas, Qiang Yang, Fabio Attorre, Erwin Bergmeier, Markus Bernhardt-Römermann, Idoia Biurrun, Steffen Boch, Gianmaria Bonari, Zoltán Botta-Dukát, Hans Henrik Bruun, Chaeho Byun, Andraž Čarni, Maria Laura Carranza, Jane A Catford, Bruno E. L. Cerabolini, Eduardo Chacón-Madrigal, Daniela Ciccarelli, Renata Ćušterevska, Iris de Ronde, Jürgen Dengler, Valentin Golub, Rense Haveman, Nate Hough-Snee, Ute Jandt, Florian Jansen, Anna Kuzemko, Filip Küzmič, Jonathan Lenoir, Armin Macanović, Corrado Marcenò, Adam Martin, Sean T Michaletz, Akira S Mori, Ülo Niinemets, Tomáš Peterka, Remigiusz Pielech, Valerijus Rašomavičius, Solvita Rūsiņa, Arildo S Dias, Mária Šibíková, Urban Šilc, Angela Stanisci, Steven Jansen, Jens-Christian Svenning, Grzegorz Swacha, Fons van der Plas, Kiril Vassilev, and Mark van Kleunen. 2021. Dihttps://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2021173118mensions of invasiveness: Links between local abundance, geographic range size, and habitat breadth in Europe’s alien and native floras. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 18 (22), e2021173118
  • Yang, Qiang, Patrick Weigelt, Trevor S Fristoe, Zhijie Zhang, Holger Kreft, Anke Stein, Hanno Seebens, Wayne Dawson, Franz Essl, Christian König, Bernd Lezner, Jan Pergl, Robin Pouteau, Petr Pyšek, Marten Winter, Aleksandr L Ebel, Nicol Fuentes, Eduardo LH Geihl, John Kartesz, Pavel Krestov, Toomas Kukk, Nishino Misako, Kupriyanov Andrey, Nikolaevich, Alla Verkhosina, Jose Luis Villseñor, Jan J Wieringa, Abida Zedam, Elena Zykoya, and Mark van Kleunen. 2021. The global loss of floristic uniqueness. Nature Communications. 12: 7290

Human macroecology

As in other species, the distribution and structure of human societies is shaped by interactions with the environment. Alongside interdisciplinary collaborators, we use a macroecological approach to understand the underlying processes that determine emergent patterns across human cultures over large spatial and temporal scales. By taking advantage of parallels between cultural and biological evolution, we apply evolutionary methods to understand how human culture has been shaped by environment and vice versa. Through much of this work, the overarching goal is to approach the study of humans through an ecological lens in order to inform thinking on global sustainability.

Selected publications: