BioFUNC
BioFUNC is a research project funded by the EU program of research and innovation Horizon2020 through a Marie Skłodowska Curie action (Ref: H2020-IF-2014-661118).
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BioFUNC stands for "Maintenance of species diversity and the stability of ecosystems functioning". The project has two main aims:
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An investigation of the effects of plant functional traits on species coexistence in spatially and temporally variable environments
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An investigation of the effects of species coexistence mechanisms on the stability of ecosystem funcitioning in space and time.
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BioFUNC is a collaborative project between IRNAS-CSIC (Spain) and IPS-University of Bern (Switzerland), which foresees three key results.
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Developing a toolbox for predicting when ecosystems services are transient or stable.
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Disentangling direct and indirect effects of climate, soil and species traits on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
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Predicting the sign and magnitude of a change in multiple ecosystem functions due to the loss of diversity or changes in species composition.
Scientific publications
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2018 has been a great year for BioFUNC. Coming out the first set of papers (see list of publications: ​Godoy et al. 2018 TREE; Matias et al. JEcol 2018; Lanuza et al. 2018. ELE
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Databases
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Estimates of competition coefficients and species vital rates for Matias et al. 2018 can be found here.
Outreaching activities
This video explains how species diversity is maintained and how this maintenance influences in turn the functioning of ecosystems. Easy to follow for all audiences!!
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Communicating science to public is an important task for a researcher. It helps to give an extra thinking of your research to in order to present your ideas in a clear way to non-specialist people. BioFUNC is committed to outreach the important of biodiversity maintenance for ecosystem functioning, promote science among students, and ecological concepts to the general public.
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Here are some activities BioFUNC has participated.
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NOV. 16 #CAFECONCIENCIA with Foundation DESCUBRE and Secondary School Vistazul. Promoting science and education among students.
NOV. 17 #CAFECONCIENCIA with Foundation DESCUBRE and Secondary School Claret.
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Sep. 16 #Noche de los investigadores. Explaining how diversity is maintained across scales from continents to local patches.
