TIME-LINES

Island TIME-LINES to quantify biodiversity change  

 

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The ERC-funded project “Island TIME-LINES to quantify biodiversity change” will use islands to bridge two research fields, palaeoecology and biogeography, and will undertake an interdisciplinary study of biodiversity change using high-quality fossil records kept on sedimentary sequences from islands across the world. 

 

One of the most exciting and important research questions in ecology and palaeoecology is how fast, where, and why biodiversity is changing; debates on the topic reflects patterns of apparently heterogeneous rates of change across the world. Biodiversity responses to different types of drivers of change remain underexplored, because to study these phenomena over the necessary span of years (often centuries to millennia) patterns and processes must be inferred from fossil records. TIME-LINES will align information on the magnitude of biodiversity change with the geographic properties of islands to address whether change from both taxonomic and functional levels is mediated by geographical context.