Following our 9th Call, sDiv has received 32 pre-proposals for individual postdoc positions and 16 pre-proposals for early career working groups. 21 pre-proposals for SynFlexWorld projects have been submitted and 5 for SynFlexMember projects. 9 applicants for individual postdoc positions and 8 for early career working groups as well as 14 applicants for SynFlexWorld and 5 for SynFlexMember projects have received a positive evaluation of their pre-proposal and have been invited to hand in a full proposal.

Despite the very challenging work and research situation due to the global Corona crisis, sDiv received many proposals of very high scientific quality. After intense discussions of the internal and external reviews, the sDiv Evaluation Board decided to support 3 early career working groups, 3 individual postdoc positions, 3 SynFlexWorld and 2 SynFlexMember projects. Congratulations to our new sDiv working groups and future sDiv postdocs. Please see the detailed list below.

Funded early career working groups

sMars – Synthesis of movement across scales: towards a process-based prediction of biodiversity patterns
main PIs:
Remo Ryser, iDiv, Leipzig, Germany
Myriam Hirt, iDiv, Leipzig, Germany

sEnigmas – Seeing the forest instead of the trees: identifying the common mechanisms behind enigmas of biodiversity
main PIs:
Isaac Overcast, Institut de Biologie de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris, France
Ana C. Afonso Silva, Université de Lille, France

sPSF – Soil microbial controls over plant coexistence: synthesizing data and theory to unravel context dependence of plant-soil feedbacks under global change
main PIs:
Gaurav Kandlikar, The Curators of the University of Missouri - Columbia, USA
Meghna Krishnadas, Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, India

Funded individual postdocs projects

Sreetama Bhadra
The impact of genome size on traits, adaptability and diversification in angiosperms

Alexandra Weyrich
sInSpEc: Inter-species epigenetics

Daniela Hoss
Understanding the role of community assembly in BEF experiments by comparing seeding and planting with removal treatments

Funded SynFlexWorld projects

sIntESE – Integrating ecosystem services into economic models
main PIs:
Alexandra Marques, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Netherlands
Aafke Schipper, Radboud University, Netherlands

sOilFauna – sOilFauna
main PIs:
Jerome Mathieu, Sorbonne University, France
Nico Eisenhauer, iDiv, Leipzig, Germany

sILK – Synthesizing Indigenous and Local Knowledge worldviews to develop frameworks for effective operationalization of relational values in environmental governance
main PIs:
Austin Himes, Mississippi State University, USA
Barbara Muraca, University of Oregon, USA

Funded SynFlexMember projects

sReStoReS – Restoration Synthesis to Reimagine Success
main PIs:
Emma Ladouceur, iDiv, Leipzig, Germany
Jonathan Chase, iDiv, Leipzig, Germany

sINTERVAL – INTERaction Variation along ALtitudinal gradients
main PIs:
Tiffany Knight, iDiv, Leipzig, Germany

Following our 8th Call, sDiv has received 26 pre-proposals for individual Postdoc positions and 45 pre-proposals for working group. 11 applicants for individual PostDoc positions and 26 for working groups have received a positive evaluation of their pre-proposal and have been invited to hand in a full proposal.

Despite the very challenging work situation during the last months, sDiv received many proposals of very high scientific quality. After intense discussions of the internal and external reviews, the sDiv Evaluation Board decided to support 7 working groups including 2 working group postdocs (plus partial funding for 2 more groups), 3 individual postdoc positions and 3 sabbatical fellowships. Congratulations to our new sDiv working groups, future sDiv postdocs and guests. Please see the list below (we present only 100% verified projects at this point).

Funded working groups projects*

sPriority –Mechanisms and Quantification of Priority Effects
main PIs:
Benjamin Delory, Institute of Ecology, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany
Tadashi Fukami,Stanford University, California, USA

sRedList – Accelerating IUCN Red List assessments for rapid and effective biodiversity monitoring
main PIs:
Luca Santini, National Research Council (Italy)
Moreno Di Marco, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

sTradES – Ecosystem services, biodiversity and anthropogenic capital embedded in internationally traded goods
main PIs:
C.J.E. (Nynke) Schulp, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Thomas Kastner, Senckenberg Institute, Frankfurt

sTreTra – Quantifying temporal change in traits across taxa and the globe
main PIs:
Franziska Schrodt, University of Nottingham
Maria Dornelas, University of St Andrews

sTraits – Integrating in-situ, upscaled and air- and spaceborne observations of plant traits
main PIs:
Philip A. Townsend, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ryan Pavlick, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

partial funding
sMile – synthesising plant Metabolomics into biodiversity, Life history & Ecology
main PIs:
Tom Walker, ETH Zürich
Franziska Schrodt, University of Nottingham

partial funding
sPrint - Working out the mechanics of predator-prey interactions to predict the present and future of biodiversity in food webs
main PI:
Mehdi Cherif, Umeå University

* Due to budgetary and other uncertainties caused by Corona, we can only announce the potential start of the working group projects in fall, but hope to welcome the new groups soon.

Funded individual postdocs projects

Juan D. Carvajal-Quintero
Assessing the effects of global environmental change on species interaction networks

Chris Barratt
Life on the edge: A new bioinformatic toolbox to conserve wildlife populations under threat from global change

Adriana Alzate Vallejo
Untangling the macro-ecological and evolutionary drivers of species range sizes and diversification rates

Funded sabbatical projects

Cynthia Chang
Placing ecological succession in applied global change and restoration context
Host: Stan Harpole

Erik Hom
Of Sloths and Franken-Lichens: Elucidating the Biodiversity, Chemical Ecology, and Physiology of Algal Polycultures
Host: Nicole van Dam

Michael Kaspari
Exploring the abiotic theatre and the ecological play: how biogeochemistry temperature, and precipitation shape terrestrial food webs
Hosts: Ulrich Brose, Stan Harpole, Nico Eisenhauer

CESAB and sDiv are the synthesis centers of the French FRB (Foundation for Research on Biodiversity) and German iDiv (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research). These two centers offer to host groups of researchers to work on a better use of existing data, information and knowledge to foster theoretical, and synthetic thinking in biodiversity research.

In the joint call called “synergy”  two theory driven groups of 5-7 researchers (4 meetings per group) were funded, that will share their meetings between the two centers.

The main topic is “Coexistence and stability in high-diversity communities”.

Funded working groups:

UNICOP - Unification of modern Coexistence theory and Price equation
PIs:
DUTHIE, A. Bradley, University of Stirling
LION, Sébastien, Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive (CEFE) - Montpellier


INTRACO - Unravelling the role of intraspecific variability in tree specied coexsistence in tropical forest
PIs:
VIEILLEDENT Ghislain, UMR AMAP – CIRAD Montpellier
MARECHAUX Isabelle,UMR AMAP – CIRAD Montpellier
 

Following our seventh sDiv call, we received many proposals of very high scientific quality. After discussion of the internal and external reviews, the sDiv Board decided to fund 6 working groups, 1 individual postdoc position and 3 sabbatical positions as followed:

Funded working groups projects

sBIOMAPS – Exploring BIOgeographic and MAcroevolutionary Patterns in organismal Stoichiometric diversity
main PIs: Angelica Gonzalez, Olivier Dézerald

sCom – Advancing inference for eDNA and other novel, high-throughput community data
main PIs: Florian Hartig, Douglas Yu

sCoRRE – Assessing functional consequences of community changes with global change using trait-based and phylogenetic approaches
main PIs: Meghan Avolio, Kimberly La Pierre

sDevTrait – streamlining development efforts in tools for ecological trait analyses
main PIs: Alexander Keller, Markus Ankenbrand

sToration – Applying Coexistence Theory to Restoration Ecology and Adaptive Management
main PIs: Lauren Shoemaker, Lauren Hallett and Akasha Faist

sUCCESS – Pantropical forest succession
main PIs: Lourens Poorter, Nadja Rüger

Funded individual postdocs projects

Roberto Rozzi
The demise of dwarfs and giants: ecological naiveté and extinction risk in insular vertebrates

Funded sabbaticals projects

George Perry (School of Environment, University of Auckland)
Reconstructing movement and emergent ecological functions for extinct animals

Lenore Fahrig (Carleton University)
Dissecting SLOSS: Why are there more species in several small than few large patches?

Malin Pinsky (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Community response to changing temperatures  across marine, freshwater, and terrestrial realms

Following our third sDiv call, we received many proposals of very high scientific quality. After discussion of the internal reviews, the sDiv Committee decided to fund nine international workshops and two individual Postdoc projects:

Workshop projects:

"Quantifying biodiversity change through time (sChange)”
main applicants: Sarah R. Supp  (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Maria Dornelas (University of St. Andrews)

"Towards understanding the causes and consequences of epigenetic diversity (sEpiDiv)”
main applicants: Katrin Heer and Lars Opgenoorth (both University of Marburg

"Scaling shrub expansion from site to biome Manuscript finalization working group" (sTUNDRA II)"
main applicants: Isla H. Myers-Smith (University of Edinburgh) and Anne Bjorkman (iDiv)

"Global Changes in Marine Plankton Diversity and Productivity (sMarD)"
main applicants: Aleksandra M. Lewandowska (University of Oldenburg) and Boris Worm (Dalhousie University)

"Community Assembly and the Functioning of Ecosystems in Open Systems (sCAFE)"
main applicants: S.K. Morgan Ernest (Utah State University) and Mathew Leibold (University of Texas at Austin)

"Synthesis on Pollen Limitation and Terrestrial biodiversity (sPlat)"
main applicants: Tiffany Knight (Washington University, iDiv), Tia-Lynn Ashman (University of Pittsburgh) and Janette Steets (Oklahoma State University)

"Linking ecological stoichiometry with environment‐diversity‐productivity relationships in grasslands (sToichNutNet)"
main applicants: Elizabeth Borer (University of Minnesota) and Anne Ebeling (University of Jena)

"Expanding Neo-Chessonian coexistence theory towards a stochastic theory for species rich communities (sNiche)"
main applicants: Thorsten Wiegand (UFZ) and Stan W. Harpole (iDiv)

"Functional Information: its potential for quantifying biodiversity and its relation to ecosystem functioning. Function, Information and Biodiversity (sFIND)"
main applicants: Keith Farnsworth (Queen’s University Belfast) and Ivo Große (University of Halle/ Saale)

Individual postdoc projects:

"Drivers of plant diversity across spatiotemporal scales: integrating ecological, evolutionary and environmental processes”
Postdoc: Juliano Sarmento Cabral (University of Göttingen)

"Assessing extinction: Crossover of geometrical, macroecological and Bayesian perspectives”
Postdoc: Petr Keil (Charles University in Prague)