BioMove

'Integrating Biodiversity Research with Movement Ecology in dynamic agricultural landscapes' [BioMove] is a Research Training Group (RTG) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) starting October 2015. BioMove is coordinated by the University of Potsdam (UP, spokesperson Prof. Dr. Florian Jeltsch) in collaboration with the Freie Universität Berlin (FU), the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) and the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF).

BioMove ...

(i) links innovative individual research projects that overcome the apparent gap between movement ecology and biodiversity research, employing a joint conceptual framework;

(ii) strategically combines empirical, experimental and modelling approaches based in one common study area (AgroScapeLab-Quillow, north-eastern Brandenburg, Germany) of sufficient size to address questions of varying spatial scales;

(iii) pursues bottom-up and top-down approaches (i.e., study the influence of individual movement processes on biodiversity and infer movement mechanisms from biodiversity patterns, respectively) to better understand possible consequences of movement changes on biodiversity;

(iv) links impacts of land-use on resource availability, landscape structures and disturbance regimes to movement processes of organisms of different taxa to identify common factors that influence biodiversity patterns.

By combining the expertise of four research institutes, this newly developed interdisciplinary research direction will profit from a new qualification program specifically tailored to bridge between state-of-the-art concepts and methods in movement ecology and biodiversity research, integrating relevant topics of genetics, evolution, behaviour, community and landscape ecology, and imparting highly demanded skills in advanced statistical and process-based modelling.