Prof. Ulrich Brose

Leiter der Forschungsgruppe

Research interest

I study how environmental factors change the structure and diversity of species communities with knock-on effects on the dynamic stability and ecosystem functioning. I describe the structure of communities by complex food-web topologies (who eats whom) and the average body sizes of all species. I am interested in the responses of these structures to global and local environmental gradients in temperature, stoichiometry and habitat fragmentation. Mathematically, I analyze how these structural responses drive the dynamic stability of populations, communities and ecosystem functions.

Short CV

Since 2015
Professor Biodiversity Theory, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Resarch (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig and Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena

2010 - 2015
Heisenberg Professor for Systemic Conservation Biology, J.F. Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology at the Georg-August-University Göttingen

2009 - 2010
Temporary Professorship at the Technische Universität Darmstadt

2004 - 2009
Head of the Emmy-Noether Group “Complex Ecological Networks” at the Technische Universität Darmstadt

2001 - 2004
Postdoc (Leopoldina Fellowship) at the San Francisco State University, USA

1997 - 2001
PhD-Thesis, Department of Biology at the University of Potsdam

1993 - 1997
Study of Biology at the University of Hamburg

1990 - 1993
Study of Biology at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University Frankfurt

Selected Publications

For an up-to-date list of publications, see my ResearcherID.

Barnes, A.D., Jochum, M., Mumme, S., Haneda, N.F., Farajallah, A., Widarto, T.H. & Brose, U. (2014): Consequences of tropical land use for multitrophic biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Nature Communications, 5: 5351; doi: 10.1038/ncomms6351.

article online

Ott, D., Digel, C., Rall, B.C., Maraun, M., Scheu, S. & Brose, U. (2014): Unifying elemental stoichiometry and metabolic theory in predicting species abundances. Ecology Letters, 17(10): 1247-1256; doi: 10.1111/ele.12330.

article online

Fussmann, K.E., Schwarzmüller, F., Brose, U., Jousset, A. & Rall, B.C. (2014): Ecological stability responses to warming. Nature Climate Change, 4: 206-210; doi: 10.1038/nclimate2134.

article online

Kalinkat, G., Schneider, F.D., Digel, C., Guill, C., Rall, B.C. & Brose, U. (2013): Body masses, functional responses and predator-prey stability. Ecology Letters 16: 1126–1134; doi: 10.1111/ele.12147.

article online

Schneider, F. D., Scheu, S. & Brose, U. (2012): Body mass constraints on feeding rates determine the consequences of predator loss. Ecology Letters 15: 436-443; doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01750.x.

article online

Brose, U., Dunne, J.A., Montoya, J.M., Petchey, O.L., Schneider, F.D. & Jacob, U. (2012): Climate change in size-structured ecosystems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367(1605): 2903-2912; doi: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0232.

article online

Riede, J., Brose, U., Ebenman, B., Jacob, U., Thompson, R., Townsend, C.R., & Jonsson, T. (2011): Stepping in Elton's footprints: a general scaling model for body masses and trophic levels across ecosystems. Ecology Letters 14: 169-178; doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01568.x.

article online

Berlow, E.L., Dunne, J.A., Martinez, N.D., Stark, P.B., Williams, R.J. & Brose, U. (2009): Simple prediction of interaction strengths in complex food webs. PNAS 106: 187-191; doi: 10.1073/pnas.0806823106.

article online

Otto, S., Rall, B.C., & Brose, U. (2007): Allometric degree distributions facilitate food web stability. Nature 450: 1226-1229; doi: 10.1038/nature06359.

article online

Brose, U., Ostling, A., Harrison, K. & Martinez, N.D. (2004): Unified spatial scaling of species and their trophic interactions. Nature 428: 167-171.

article online

iDiv-Publikationen

Barnes, A. D., Jochum, M., Lefcheck, J. S., Eisenhauer, N., Scherber, C., O’Connor, M. I., de Ruiter, P., Brose, U.

(2018):

Energy Flux: The Link between Multitrophic Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33(3), 186-97

10.1016/j.tree.2017.12.007

Wang, S., Brose, U.

(2018):

Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in food webs: the vertical diversity hypothesis Ecology Letters 21(1), 9-20

10.1111/ele.12865

Barnes, A. D., Allen, K., Kreft, H., Corre, M. D., Jochum, M., Veldkamp, E., Clough, Y., Daniel, R., Darras, K., Denmead, L. H., Haneda, N. F., Hertel, D., Knohl, A., Kotowska, M. M., Kurniawan, S., Meijide, A., Rembold, K., Prabowo, W. E., Schneider, D., Tscharntke, T., Brose, U.

(2017):

Direct and cascading impacts of tropical land-use change on multi-trophic biodiversity Nature Ecology & Evolution 1(10), 1511-19

10.1038/s41559-017-0275-7

Brose, U., Blanchard, J. L., Eklöf, A., Galiana, N., Hartvig, M., Hirt, M. R., Kalinkat, G., Nordström, M. C., O'Gorman, E. J., Rall, B. C., et al.

(2017):

Predicting the consequences of species loss using size-structured biodiversity approaches Biological Reviews 92(2), 684-97

10.1111/brv.12250

Delmas, E., Brose, U., Gravel, D., Stouffer, D. B., Poisot, T.

(2017):

Simulations of biomass dynamics in community food webs Methods in Ecology and Evolution 8(7), 881-86

10.1111/2041-210X.12713

Fussmann, K. E., Rosenbaum, B., Brose, U., Rall, B. C.

(2017):

Interactive effects of shifting body size and feeding adaptation drive interaction strengths of protist predators under warming bioRxiv 101675,

10.1101/101675

Hirt, M. R., Jetz, W., Rall, B. C., Brose, U.

(2017):

A general scaling law reveals why the largest animals are not the fastest Nature Ecology & Evolution 1(8), 1116-22

10.1038/s41559-017-0241-4

Hirt, M. R., Lauermann, T., Brose, U., Noldus, L. P. J. J., Dell, A. I.

(2017):

The little things that run: a general scaling of invertebrate exploratory speed with body mass Ecology 98(11), 2751-57

10.1002/ecy.2006

Jochum, M., Barnes, A. D., Ott, D., Lang, B., Klarner, B., Farajallah, A., Scheu, S., Brose, U.

(2017):

Decreasing Stoichiometric Resource Quality Drives Compensatory Feeding across Trophic Levels in Tropical Litter Invertebrate Communities The American Naturalist 190(1), 131-43

doi:10.1086/691790

Jochum, M., Barnes, A. D., Weigelt, P., Ott, D., Rembold, K., Farajallah, A., Brose, U.

(2017):

Resource stoichiometry and availability modulate species richness and biomass of tropical litter macro-invertebrates Journal of Animal Ecology 86(5), 1114-23

10.1111/1365-2656.12695

Lang, B., Ehnes, R. B., Brose, U., Rall, B. C.

(2017):

Temperature and consumer type dependencies of energy flows in natural communities Oikos 126(12), 1717-25

10.1111/oik.04419

Li, Y., Brose, U., Meyer, K., Rall, B. C.

(2017):

How patch size and refuge availability change interaction strength and population dynamics: a combined individual- and population-based modeling experiment PeerJ 5(e2993),

10.7717/peerj.2993

Liao, J., Bearup, D., Wang, Y., Nijs, I., Bonte, D., Li, Y., Brose, U., Wang, S., Blasius, B.

(2017):

Robustness of metacommunities with omnivory to habitat destruction: Disentangling patch fragmentation from patch loss Ecology 98(6), 1631-39

10.1002/ecy.1830

Schwarz, B., Barnes, A. D., Thakur, M. P., Brose, U., Ciobanu, M., Reich, P. B., Rich, R. L., Rosenbaum, B., Stefanski, A., Eisenhauer, N.

(2017):

Warming alters energetic structure and function but not resilience of soil food webs Nature Climate Change 7(12), 895-900

10.1038/s41558-017-0002-z

Barnes, A. D., Weigelt, P., Jochum, M., Ott, D., Hodapp, D., Haneda, N. F., Brose, U.

(2016):

Species richness and biomass explain spatial turnover in ecosystem functioning across tropical and temperate ecosystems Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 371(1694),

10.1098/rstb.2015.0279

Binzer, A., Guill, C., Rall, B. C., Brose, U.

(2016):

Interactive effects of warming, eutrophication and size-structure: impacts on biodiversity and food-web structure Global Change Biology 22(1), 220-227

10.1111/gcb.13086

Brose, U., Hillebrand, H.

(2016):

Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in dynamic landscapes Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371(1694),

10.1098/rstb.2015.0267

Clough, Y., Krishna, V. V., Corre, M. D., Darras, K., Denmead, L. H., Meijide, A., Moser, S., Musshoff, O., Steinebach, S., Veldkamp, E., Allen, K., Barnes, A. D., Breidenbach, N., Brose, U., et al.

(2016):

Land-use choices follow profitability at the expense of ecological functions in Indonesian smallholder landscapes Nature Communications 7(13137),

10.1038/ncomms13137

Schneider, F. D., Brose, U., Rall, B. C., Guill, C.

(2016):

Animal diversity and ecosystem functioning in dynamic food webs Nature Communications 7(12718),

10.1038/ncomms12718

Teuscher, M., Gérard, A., Brose, U., Buchori, D., Clough, Y., Ehbrecht, M., Hölscher, D., Irawan, B., Sundawati, L., Wollni, M., Kreft, H.

(2016):

Experimental Biodiversity Enrichment in Oil-Palm-Dominated Landscapes in Indonesia Frontiers in Plant Science 7(1538),

10.3389/fpls.2016.01538

Barnes, A. D., Spey, I.-K., Rohde, L., Brose, U., Dell, A. I.

(2015):

Individual behaviour mediates effects of warming on movement across a fragmented landscape Functional Ecology 29(12), 1543-1552

10.1111/1365-2435.12474

Kalinkat, G., Jochum, M., Brose, U., Dell, A. I.

(2015):

Body size and the behavioral ecology of insects: linking individuals to ecological communities Current Opinion in Insect Science 9, 24-30

10.1016/j.cois.2015.04.017

Mumme, S., Jochum, M., Brose, U., Haneda, N. F., Barnes, A. D.

(2015):

Functional diversity and stability of litter-invertebrate communities following land-use change in Sumatra, Indonesia Biological Conservation 191, 750-58

10.1016/j.biocon.2015.08.033

Schwarzmueller, F., Eisenhauer, N., Brose, U.

(2015):

'Trophic whales' as biotic buffers: weak interactions stabilize ecosystems against nutrient enrichment Journal of Animal Ecology 84(3), 680-91

10.1111/1365-2656.12324