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Ecogere : Ecology & Genetics of Conservation & Restoration

ECOGERE team focuses its research projects on the study of ecology and community and population genetics for conservation and restoration. In a global change context, we seek to understand ecological and evolutionary processes which govern ecosystem functionning, in the aim to improve their conservation and restoration, using integrated approaches.

Team Leaders : Marie-Lise Benot & Soizig Le Stradic

Managers : Alice Rivière & Florence Le Pierres

Background and motivation

In the context of global changes (land-use changes, climate change, pollutions, invasive species, …), ecosystems suffer from multiples pressures, leading to their degradation or even their destruction. That leads to biodiversity loss with negative impacts on ecosystem functionning. Thus, Issues on biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and restoration are important. Among them, a better knowledge of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms and processes, and the development of diagnostic and decision-making tools for public authorities and managers are key issues to a good assessment of their well-preserved state, their degradation or the remediation process progress.

Objectives and scientific strategy

Bringing together community ecologists and population geneticians, the ECOGERE team aims to lead integrated projects, from genes to communities, on various ecosystems at the local (particularly the Nouvelle-Aquitaine area), national and international scales with the objective of developing more partnerships with socio-economic teams, the FAUNA biodiversity observatory (ex-OAFS, becoming in 2021 a Bordeaux University service unit) and its partner network, and with other stakeholders through partnerships and citizen science programs.

Our research plan identifies four priorities :

1. Integration of the biodiversity components and their responses to global change for species conservation
2. Understanding of ecological processes for the restoration of degraded area 
3. Increase interdisciplinarity with social sciences and humanities and relationships with stakeholders for a more integrated study of socio-ecosystem
4. Development of decision-making tools for knowledge transfer to managers

Among these objectives, we will focus on:

• A better conceptualisation of the reference concept in conservation and restoration.
• The characterisation of restoration and rehabilitation trajectories
• By taking into account the system ages in conservation issues: historical ecology, indigenousness, old ecosystem, naturality, etc.
• By taking into account the intra-species level in conservation and restoration projects.
• A better understanding of the impact of biodiversity and the biotic interactions for ecosystem conservation and rehabilitation.
• A better understanding of the philosophical relationships between humans and other living organisms
• Integration of the anthropic context in ecosystem functioning (management, ecosystemic services, socio-ecosystem, ethno-ecology) with more collaboration with socio-economic research teams and stakeholders.

Keywords

Community ecology, population genetics, restoration, conservation, rehabilitation, phytomanagement, biological phylosophy, biotic interactions, structural and functional biodiversity, socio-ecosystem

Team members