Email:
cottenie@uoguelph.ca
Website links:
Karl Cottenie
Program
About My Research...
A metacommunity consists of multiple ecological communities in a landscape linked by dispersal of individuals between these sites. The metacommunity approach adds a layer of complexity above community dynamics and biodiversity: depending on the degree of dispersal and environmental heterogeneity between different sites, ecological dynamics can be determined by local environmental conditions or by processes in neighbouring sites that are propagated via dispersal of individuals. I employ a quantitative approach to integrate observational, experimental and synthetic data sets, gathered by myself and others, to study this interaction of dispersal and environmental processes.