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Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB)
Recent news
EEB Publication Spotlight: Professor Gideon Bradburd and Postdoc Fellow Michael Grundler in Science
Their findings demonstrate the importance of defining the spatiotemporal context of genetic ancestry when describing human genetic variation and caution against the oversimplified interpretations of genetic data.
Congratulations to EEB Professor, Stephen A. Smith, named 2024 AAAS fellow
The American Association for the Advancement of Science announced 471 members of the 2024 class, elected for their “efforts on behalf of the advancement of science, or its applications, are scientifically or socially distinguished.”
RESEARCH FEATURE
EEB Postdoctoral Fellow Thiago Gonçalves-Souza and department Chair Professor Nate Sanders just published an article in Nature titled "Species turnover does not rescue biodiversity in fragmented landscapes."
Abstract: Habitat fragmentation generally reduces biodiversity at the patch scale (α diversity)1. However, there is ongoing debate about whether such negative effects can be alleviated at the landscape scale (γ diversity) if among-patch diversity (β diversity) increases as a result of fragmentation2,3,4,5,6. This controversial view has not been rigorously tested. Here we use a dataset of 4,006 taxa across 37 studies from 6 continents to test the effects of fragmentation on biodiversity across scales by explicitly comparing continuous and fragmented landscapes. We find that fragmented landscapes consistently have both lower α diversity and lower γ diversity. Although fragmented landscapes did tend to have higher β diversity, this did not translate into higher γ diversity. Our findings refute claims that habitat fragmentation can increase biodiversity at landscape scales, and emphasize the need to restore habitat and increase connectivity to minimize biodiversity loss at ever-increasing scales.
Michigan News did an excellent write -up of the article: find it here.
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