Biogeography & Macroecology

The Biogeography & Macroecology (BIOMAC) lab is a research group at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Netherlands. We are part of the Department Theoretical and Computational Ecology (TCE) within the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED). The central aim of our work is to quantify how biodiversity and abiotic components of the Earth system vary across space and time, how they interact, and how responses of species and ecosystems to changing environmental conditions can be predicted and forecasted.

The group currently comprises research staff (associate and assistant professors), scientific developers, data scientists, and postdoctoral researchers. We work at the interface of ecology, Earth science, informatics and data science, and cover topics in biodiversity, geodiversity, conservation, physical geography, monitoring, policy and global biodiversity change. Please read more about our research and our teaching, have a look at our news page, or get in touch with our lab members.

Selected publications

Schleuning, M., Neuschulz, E.L., Albrecht, J., Bender, I.M.A., Bowler, D.E., Dehling, D.M., Fritz, S.A., Hof, C., Müller, T., Nowak, L., Sorensen, M.C., Böhning-Gaese, K. & Kissling, W.D. (2020): Trait-based assessments of climate-change impacts on interacting species. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 35: 319–328. [ABSTRACT]
Lim, J.Y., Svenning, J.-C., Göldel, B., Faurby, S. & Kissling, W.D. (2020). Frugivore-fruit size relationships between palms and mammals reveal past and future defaunation impacts. Nature Communications 11: 4904. [ABSTRACT] [PRESS RELEASE] [BLOG POST]
Skidmore, A.K., Coops, N.C., Neinavaz, E., Ali, A., Schaepman, M.E., Paganini, M., Kissling, W.D., Vihervaara, P., Darvishzadeh, R., Feilhauer, H., Fernandez, M., Fernandez, N., Gorelick, N., Geizendorffer, I., Heiden, U., Heurich, M., Hobern, D., Holzwarth, S., Muller-Karger, F.E., Van De Kerchove, R., Lausch, A., Leitão, P.J., Lock, M.C., Mücher, C.A., O'Connor, B., Rocchini, D., Roeoesli, C., Turner, W., Vis, J.K., Wang, T., Wegmann, M. & Wingate, V. (2021): Priority list of biodiversity metrics to observe from space. Nature Ecology and Evolution 5: 896–906. [ABSTRACT] [PRESS RELEASE]
Allan, J.R., Possingham, H.P., Atkinson, S.C., Waldron, A., Di Marco, M., Butchart, S.H.M., Adams, V.M., Kissling, W.D., Worsdell, T., Sandbrook, C., Gibbon, G., Kumar, K., Mehta, P., Maron, M., Williams, B.A., Jones, K.R., Wintle, B.A., Reside, A.E. & Watson, J.E.M. (2022): The minimum land area requiring conservation attention to safeguard biodiversity. Science 376: 1094–1101. [ABSTRACT] [PERSPECTIVE] [PRESS RELEASE]
Zhao, Z., Koulouzis, S., Bianchi, R., Farshidi, S., Shi, Z., Xin, R., Wang, Y., Li, N., Shi, Y., Timmermans, J. & Kissling, W.D. (2022): Notebook-as-a-VRE (NaaVRE): from private notebooks to a collaborative cloud virtual research environment. Software: Practice and Experience (in press). [ABSTRACT]

News

Vacancy Postdoc LiDAR remote sensing

2022-07-21

We are looking for a Postdoc to work on LiDAR remote sensing for EU habitat condition mapping

New paper in Science

2022-06-07

Our paper maps the optimal areas for conserving terrestrial species and ecosystems across the world and estimates that 44% of Earth’s land area requires conservation to safeguard biodiversity.

Functional susceptibility of tropical forests

2022-05-16

Our new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows that drier tropical forests are overall less functionally diverse than wetter forests, and what the implications are under climate change.