Research laboratories

The CEFE is currently the largest French research center in Ecology and Evolutionary Ecology. Our Mission: perform independent, fundamental scientific research on the dynamics of biodiversity, planetary environmental change, and sustainable development. We work at a great variety of field sites around the world, but developed particular expertise in Mediterranean and tropical ecosystems. One of our main objectives is to develop scenarios on the evolution of biological systems, as well as strategies for their conservation and their restoration.
CEFE is organised into four scientific departments:

1. Evolutionary Ecology
The studies in the Department of Evolutionary Ecology focus on the dynamics and adaptation of individuals and populations in heterogeneous (in space and/or time) landscapes. They also aim at addressing questions of biodiversity management and conservation.

2. Functional Ecology
Understanding the functional bases for understanding how organizations interact with each other and with their environment at different scales is a major objective of the department. A combination of functional trait and ecophysiology approaches characterizes the functional structure of communities and quantifies the impact of organisms on ecosystem properties under different climate or disturbance constraints. This information enables us to conceptualize, develop and parameterize our models of community composition at the local level, of ecosystem functioning and associated biosphere/atmosphere exchanges, as well as those relating to species ranges at the regional or continental level. The study of the impacts of global changes, particularly climate and land use changes, on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and the sustainability of associated services is a central theme of the department's research activities. Our experimental and modelling work focuses mainly on terrestrial ecosystems with a strong focus on the Mediterranean region.

3. Biodiversity and Conservation
Our departement aims at understanding and predicting the dynamic of ecosystems and biodiversity in relation to human activities. To address questions on the management and the conservation of species and ecosystems, we favor interfaces between population dynamics, community ecology, evolutionary ecology and social and human sciences. To conduct our research, we rely on long-term monitoring programs, mathematical and statistical modelling and field experimentation.

4. Interaction, Ecology and Societies
The bias of the InES department is to focus not on particular species, but on the biology of species interactions and the processes shaping networks and cascades of interspecific interactions. More specifically, the objective is to understand the co-evolution processes linked to interactions between very different biological species (e.g., fungi, insect plants, human plants) and to understand their ecological consequences.