Our work aims to understand how differences among species allows them to coexist and, in turn, how their coexistence controls the ecological functioning of communities and the services they provide to humanity. Research in our group focuses largely on freshwater phytoplankton for a number of reasons: planktonic organisms are great model organisms for testing and advancing both evolutionary and ecological theory, they are important drivers of global primary production, they are the base of freshwater food webs, and they may be an important source of energy for humans in the future. Our approach is largely experimental and it aims to test theory using microcosm, mesocosm and field experiments. We also use meta-analysis and model-fitting approaches to draw inferences from large data-sets and field survey data.
