mission statement

Our goal is to understand the processes that drive biodiversity patterns and their spatio-temporal dynamics across scales, the assembly of ecological communities, the factors that determine the value of landscapes for ecosystem service provision

By observing and predicting the long-term effects of global change and of socio-economic activities (including climate and landuse change, landscape fragmentation and habitat loss, biological invasions) on biodiversity patterns, we want to provide the knowledge basis for sound conservation management and ecological restoration.

current news

• A study including researchers of University of Vienna - CVL is on the current cover of Nature. Using vegetation survey data, the researchers examine how plant species richness has changed over the past 145 years on 302 mountain summits across Europe and find that richness increased strongly on the vast majority of Europe’s summits over this period. They note, however, that the rate of increase has accelerated over time, with five times as much species enrichment occurring in the past decade compared with fifty years ago. Their analysis reveals a positive correlation between the magnitude of the increase in richness and the rate of warming, suggesting that climate-induced biotic change is accelerating even in remote places on Earth.
  See the article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0005-6
  
  
• Ö1 Radiokolleg - Das große Insektensterben
• New positions: Post-Doc position in Biodiversity Research
  and PhD position: Modellling range dynamics of plants and butterflies
• A study from researchers of the CVL is covered in Science as a highlight in biogeographical research in other journals. See the article at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6378/881.3 and the original publication at http://www.pnas.org/content/115/8/1848
• A study of researchers from the CVL was on the cover of PNAS. It suggests that the elevational ranges of plants in the European Alps have shifted upslope and their abundance has increased on average over the past several decades, that the speed of these changes decreased with increasing elevation, and that species at the highest elevations are at risk from climate change and competitors. See the article at http://www.pnas.org/content/115/8/1848
  
  
• New position: Tenure-Track Professorship for the field of Invasion Biology
• New position: PhD position in invasion ecology/macro ecology

newest publications

2018

Ika Djukic, Sebastian Kepfer-Rojas, Inger Kappel Schmidt, Klaus Steenberg Larsen, Claus Beier, Björn Berg, Kris Verheyen, Adriano Caliman, Alain Paquette, Alba Gutiérrez-Girón, Alberto Humber, Alejandro Valdecantos, Alessandro Petraglia, Heather Alexander, Algirdas Augustaitis, Amélie Saillard, Ana Carolina Ruiz Fernández, Ana I. Sousa, Ana I. Lillebø, Anderson da Rocha Gripp, André Jean Francez, Andrea Fischer, Andreas Bohner, Andrey Malyshev, Andrijana Andrić, Andy Smith, Angela Stanisci, Anikó Seres, Anja Schmidt, Anna Avila, Anne Probst, Annie Ouin, Anzar A. Khuroo, Arne Verstraeten, Arely N. Palabral-Aguilera, Artur Stefanski, Aurora Gaxiola, Bart Muys, Bernard Bosman, Bernd Ahrends, Birgit Sattler, Brigitta Erschbamer, Florian Hofhansl, Franz Zehetner, Harald Pauli, Kathrin Käppeler, Róbert Kanka, Simon Drollinger, Stephan Glatzel, Tudor Mihai Ursu, : Early stage litter decomposition across biomes. Science of the Total Environment 628-629: 1369–1394 j.scitotenv.2018.01.012

Hanno Seebens, Tim M. Blackburn, Ellie E. Dyer, Piero Genovesi, Philip E. Hulme, Jonathan M. Jeschke, Shyama Pagad, Petr Pyšek, Mark Van Kleunen, Marten Winter, Michael Ansong, Margarita Arianoutsou, Sven Bacher, Bernd Blasius, Eckehard G. Brockerhoff, Giuseppe Brundu, César Capinha, Charlotte E. Causton, Laura Celesti-Grapow, Wayne Dawson, Stefan Dullinger, Evan P. Economo, Nicol Fuentes, Benoit Guénard, Heinke Jäger, John Kartesz, Marc Kenis, Ingolf Kühn, Bernd Lenzner, Andrew M. Liebhold, Alexander Mosena, Dietmar Moser, Wolfgang Nentwig, Misako Nishino, David Pearman, Jan Pergl, Wolfgang Rabitsch, Julissa Rojas-Sandoval, Alain Roques, Stephanie Rorke, Silvia Rossinelli, Helen E. Roy, Riccardo Scalera, Stefan Schindler, Kateřina Štajerová, Barbara Tokarska-Guzik, Kevin Walker, Darren F. Ward, Takehiko Yamanaka, Franz Essl: Global rise in emerging alien species results from increased accessibility of new source pools. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) 115 (10): E2264–E2273 pnas.1719429115

Sabine Bettina Rumpf, Inger Greve Alsos, Chris Ware: Prevention of microbial species introductions to the Arctic: The efficacy of footwear disinfection measures on cruise ships. NeoBiota 37: 37–49 neobiota.37.22088

Josef Greimler, Christian H. Schulze, Patricio López Sepúlveda, Patricio Novoa, Alejandro Gatica, Karl Reiter, Johannes Wessely, Carlos Baeza, Patricio Peñailillo, Eduardo Ruiz, Tod Stuessy: Strong indication of an extinction-based saturation of the flora on the Pacific Robinson Crusoe Islands. Ecology and Evolution 8 (5): 2527–2533 ece3.3882

Christian Levers, Daniel Müller, Karlheinz Erb, Helmut Haberl, Martin Rudbeck Jepsen, Marc J. Metzger, Patrick Meyfroidt, Tobias Plieninger, Christoph Plutzar, Julia Stürck, Peter H. Verburg, Pieter J. Verkerk, Tobias Kuemmerle: Archetypical patterns and trajectories of land systems in Europe. Regional Environmental Change 18 (3): 715–732 s10113-015-0907-x

Sabine Bettina Rumpf, Karl Hülber, Günther Klonner, Dietmar Moser, Martin Schütz, Johannes Wessely, Wolfgang Willner, Niklaus E. Zimmermann, Stefan Dullinger: Range dynamics of mountain plants decrease with elevation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) 115 (8): 1848–1853 pnas.1713936115

Division Head
Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Stefan Dullinger


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