Decoding the intraspecific engine of functional diversity in a changing world

Objective

Europe is facing accelerating biodiversity loss and increasingly frequent climate extremes, raising urgent questions about the resilience of ecosystems. Functional diversity (FD), which reflects differences in plant strategies for resource use and stress tolerance, is central to predicting biodiversity change and ecosystem functioning under global change. Yet, most current FD assessments assume that individuals within a species are functionally identical, thereby neglecting intraspecific trait variability (ITV). This oversimplification risks biased FD estimates and may misguide conservation investments, particularly as ITV tends to expand under environmental stress. IntraDivS will fill this gap through three complementary steps: i) experimentally disentangling the effects of climate and competition on ITV, ii) testing these responses along European natural gradients, and iii) upscaling the resulting rules into predictive, uncertainty-aware FD maps for Europe. Building on my experimental ecology expertise and leveraging the host group’s unprecedented above- and belowground individual-level trait datasets, together with powerful modelling approaches, I will identify ITV mechanisms and embed them into trait-based biodiversity predictions. The project will deliver the first ITV-explicit functional diversity atlas of Europe, covering both above- and belowground dimensions, and provide high-precision, policy-relevant tools to support the EU Nature Restoration Law and Climate Adaptation Strategy. Hosted at CSIC-MBG under the supervision of Dr. Carmona, a leading figure in trait-based macroecology, I will receive advanced training in functional diversity science and macroecological modelling. The fellowship will consolidate my independence in trait-based ecology, strengthen my leadership experience for securing future funding and launching my career as an internationally recognized researcher.