Ludmilla MARTIN
PhD Student
Speciality: Landscape ecology and genetics
Team: GEP/BIPE
ludmilla.martin@u-picardie.fr
Topic of the thesis
Influence of woody elements and associated plant communities on arthropod communities and the functioning of ecosystems in agricultural landscapes.
Key words
Global changes, landscape ecology, landscape genetics, community dynamics, trophic interactions, plant-insect interactions, biodiversity, ecosystem services
Summary of the thesis
Global change (related to climate and land use) are serious threats to biodiversity and the services it provides to human societies. In many European regions, original forest cover and hedgerows has been reduced significantly and still exists today in the form of small fragments, often embedded in a matrix under intensive agriculture. Despite their small size, these woody elements often play a role as a refuge for biodiversity and can provide many ecosystem services (ES) to human societies. Biodiversity and ES of these small woody elements are interdependent due to shared environmental factors that govern them. However, the nature and the strength of the interactions between biodiversity and ES vary according to taxonomic groups and ES provided, but also according to landscape context and intensity of surrounding land use, as well as their appearance history. Thus, the relationship between plant species diversity and functional diversity of insects and the ecosystem services they deliver, are now largely unexplored, particularly in the context of landscapes subject to climate change.
My work is divided into several tasks:
- Diversity and distribution of ground beetles species in agricultural landscapes and relations with the diversity of vascular plants, the structure and history of the landscape, and environmental factors
- Diet of dominant species of beetles along a contrasting landscape matrix
- Genetic landscape of an aphid-plant couple
- Assessment of the stability of the ecosystems with functional groups of arthropods
Part of this work will be done from a sampling across the biome temperate Europe.