Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

I am broadly interested in how organisms interact with each other and their environment and what this means for people. In my research I investigate the role of species interactions in providing regulating ecosystem services like seed dispersal, pest control and habitat provision. My research is based on the southern slope of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, and is part of the DFG-funded research unit “The role of nature for human well-being in the Kilimanjaro Social-Ecological System”.

The slopes of Kilimanjaro offer a fantastic opportunity to look at how species interactions, and the services they underpin, change across a variety of ecosystems defined by altitude and land-use. I aim to build a conceptual framework that allows to quantify the role of species in the provision of ecosystem services and use it to analyse the data that I am collecting on the mountain. 

Keywords
Community ecology, species interactions, biodiversity, ecosystem services, nature’s contributions to people