Shedding light on a dark biodiversity

The theory of "dark diversity" was introduced in March by a group of botanists from Hungary. It says that the missing species have the same impact on an ecosystem as the present ones. To understand structure of the ecosytem it is necessary to take into an account the species which are not present. This may be caused due to changed environmental conditions and agricultural policy. The idea of this concept is similar to a dark matter which consitutes 80% of the universe. The higher the "dark diversity" is, the more probable is a return of these species into their primary ecosystem. A new project concerning this topic is starting at the Institute of Botany, AS CR in a collaboration with the Department of Botany at the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia. Positions are available for bachelor, master and PhD. students.

You can find more informations here.

Source: http://www.butbn.cas.cz/francesco/Webpage/Home_-.html

Author: Ad