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Since January 1st, 2019, the unit is structured into 7 research teams with strong interaction between teams (see interaction network built on the basis of the Wos corpus from 2014 to 2019).

The research carried out by these teams aims to produce knowledge on the mechanisms that govern the evolution of diversity at different hierarchical levels (communities, species, populations, genes) in a perspective of sustainable management of natural resources and environments. They aim to promote a more integrated analysis of biological diversity by considering the interactions between species, populations and individuals as the driving force of its evolution.
This ambition of integration is placed at three levels:

Biological scales of hierarchical organization of diversity, from gene to phenotype to ecosystem

Biological diversity is distributed between different hierarchical levels, which have often been studied by different scientific disciplines, each with their own approach. Our goal is to bring these approaches together in a more integrative way from the gene to the ecosystem, taking advantage of the multidisciplinary of scientific background within the unit.

Spatial distribution scales of diversity, from the stand level to the landscape and the distribution area of a species

The organization of current diversity results from processes acting at different spatial scales. Integration between scales requires computer models and simulations, which in turn need to be validated by field data.

The historical steps that have shaped diversity, from the Holocene to the present time and the next century 

In parallel with spatial analysis, historical reconstructions of the evolution of diversity are being compared with genetic and historical data. An original extension of this research consists in using these reconstructions to predict the evolution of diversity in the perspective of future climate change.

Among the three levels of integration mentioned above, priority is given to integration between biological levels of organization of diversity from genes to communities. In terms of methods, an important place is given to theoretical approaches, combining analytical models and simulation. These approaches are usefully confronted with experimental data to bring out conclusions that are as generic as possible, thus facilitating their transfer to managers of ecosystems studied within the research unit.