Abstract
Plants live in heterogeneous landscapes, where they occupy temporally suitable patches (their habitat). Under natural conditions plants need to disperse to new suitable patches as existing ones are lost due to succession and disturbances. Dispersal has become ever more essential for plant species survival, however, in our current world of human-induced habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and climate change. Plants cannot walk - but they can disperse as seeds. During this life stage they may fly, float or hitch a ride, as plant seed dispersal occurs predominantly via the dispersal vectors wind, water and animals. While our knowledge of the ecological mechanisms by which these processes operate is increasing, we still have very little quantitative information on dispersal distances and patterns. Such information, however, is of great importance to understand and predict current and future plant species dynamics and to effectively plan nature conservation and restoration activities. Therefore, the main aim of this project is to quantify the potential dispersal distances and dispersal patterns of plant seeds by wind, water and waterbirds in realistic heterogeneous landscapes. I will address this issue by developing mechanistic, spatially-explicit seed dispersal models using a truly multidisciplinary approach. I will combine plant ecological information with landscape ecological analyses and build on sophisticated physical and hydrological air and water flow models from pollution spread modelling. In addition, I will build a seed dispersal model for waterbird-mediated dispersal using position tracking data of mallards, the most common seed-dispersing duck species. By combining ecological knowledge of plants and animals with theoretical and applied physics from meteorology and hydrology, the proposed research crosses existing boundaries. In this way, it will contribute to bringing ecology a major step further in the understanding, quantification and prediction of plant movement, and help evaluate and predict effects of ongoing habitat fragmentation and climate change.
Netherlands