Welcome Benoit Gauzens - NEW SE
Submitted by editor on 6 May 2024.
Benoit Gauzens joins our editorial board! Take a look at their interview!
Keywords: networks, food webs, population dynamics, global change, ecosystem functioning
Affiliation: German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
Personal website: https://www.idiv.de/en/profile/493.html
Twitter: @BGauzens
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
1. What's your main research focus at the moment?
I am using food web models to understand how the impact of different types of perturbations (temperature increase, resource harvesting, pollution,...) will cascade through communities and affect biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
2. Can you describe your research career? Where, what, when?
I studied my Master in Paleontology in Paris (2005-2007) and then did my PhD in ecology (2007-2011) exploring how the structure of food webs responds to different environmental gradients (like top-down and bottom-up forces). After that, I worked for three years on a project led by computer scientists. The main idea was to apply the concepts of ecology and evolution to computer systems (usually characterised by monocultures) to increase their adaptive capacities and stability. Since 2016 I have been working at iDiv in Germany where I aim to develop a line of research at the interface between modelling and empiricism / data analysis to better understand the effects of global change on communities and ecosystems.
3. How come that you became a scientist in ecology?
During my Master's internship. It was the first time I discovered ecology as a science. I enjoyed addressing fundamental questions and trying to understand the complex mechanisms and indirect effects of species on each other. It was also when I realised that a career in academia was a possibility and “why not?”.
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