Rafael Wüest - Personal Homepage

Organisational unit: Landscape Dynamics Dynamic Macroecology Phone: +41 44 7392 126 Fax: +41 44 7392 215 Room: Bi HL E 31 E-Mail: Address: Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL Zürcherstrasse 111 8903 Birmensdorf

Research Interests

Why do plant species grow where they grow? And don't grow where they don't? Knowing how preferences or tolerances to abiotic environmental gradients evolved will help us answering this question. That's why I am interested in the evolution of ecological characteristics of plants. How comes species evolved differences in ecological requirements? What kinds of evolutionary models are able to best describe the observed diversity in plant's ecological preferences? Is ecological diversification simply a result of speciation or is ecological diversification of populations actually a driver of speciation processes? Finding out more about these questions will also help us to predict how global change is going to affect biodiversity on earth in the near future.
Analyzing abiotic environmental factors won't be sufficient when assessing global change impact. Biotic interactions are as important in determining species' range limits and need to be studied carefully, too. Studying the assembly of local communities and assemblages using the framework of niche ecology integrates both abiotic and biotic components.
Finally, I am very much interested in bridging gaps between research disciplines. Ecologists on their own won't be able to explain the above questions, neither will be evolutionary biologists. I am very happy to work in a project that tries to combine the best of each of the involved disciplines to better understand the fascinating diversity of life on earth!

Keywords: Niche Evolution, Ecological Tolerances, Climate Change, Comparative Methods, Community Ecology, Interdisciplinary Research

Project

I am working on the SPEED project (SPatially Explicit Evolution of Diversity) under supervision of Dr. Peter B. Pearman, Dr. Niklaus E. Zimmermann and Prof. H. Peter Linder (University of Zurich).

Spatially Explicit Evolution of Diversity (SPEED) This is an interdisciplenary project, financed by the SNF Sinergia program, to investigate niche evolution. We seek to understand how niche evolution will contribute to patterns of biodiversity under altered climates. Available languages: English

Publications

Talks

Regional species pools in a biodiversity hotspot - the case of Restionaceae in the Cape Floristic Region

Conference talk at the 6th Annual Meeting of the Specialist Group for Macroecology of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ).

Available niches canalize climatic diversification in the grass subfamily Danthonioideae

Conference talk at the IBS conference: Advances in Biogeography - Early Career Conference 2011

Niche evolution at different scales- The globally distributed grass subfamily Danthonioideae, and regional species pools of Restionaceae in the Cape

Invited talk at Monday Lunchtime Seminar Series, Imperial College, London, UK, 2011

Education

since 2009 PhD Student at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

2008-2009 PhD Student at the Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Switzerland

2006-2008 MSc Biology, Ecology at the Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Switzerland

2003-2005 BSc Biology at the Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Teaching

I was assisting in two courses at the University of Zurich:

• Pflanzen und Lebensräume der Alpen (BIO233)
• Macroecology, niche evolution and climate change (BIO232)