Frédéric Clement

Department of Biometry and Environmental System Analysis

Tennenbacher Straße 4, 79106 Freiburg, Germany
Room 03.064

email: frederic.clement(a)biom.uni-freiburg.de
phone: +49 761 203-8667 
fax: +49 761 203-3751

Research Interests

Plant community, hydrological niches, diversity, mechanism of coexistence, temporal heterogeneity, time series analysis, sum exceedance values (SEVs).

 1. Species hydrological niche and community composition

Previous results (e.g. Silvertown et al. 1999) suggest that plants are constrained by a trade-off between the time they can tolerate (i) drought and (ii) water-logged stressful conditions. The hydrological niche of a species is defined by the range this species occupies on this gradient. As a result different hydrological condition lead to different community composition 

Hypothesis: This alignment of species, and thus communities, on the stress gradient can be observed in systems with different hydrological regimes. 

2. Hydrological dynamic and community diversity

Empirical models (e.g. Chesson 2000) predict that temporal heterogeneity can provide the conditions for coexistence and thus increase the number of species community. Still, for the relation between water level fluctuation and plant diversity, observational and empirical evidences are sparse.

Hypothesis: In plant community, diversity is driven by water fluctuation more than by the average condition.

Hypothesis: Water level fluctuation on the seasonal and inter-annual scales are the more important ones to drive diversity.