Experimental Biogeography

Biogeography has traditionally focused on describing spatial patterns of biodiversity—documenting where species occur and inferring the historical forces behind those distributions. However, unprecedented rates of climate and land-use change now demand more than description: they require prediction. To forecast range shifts, community reassembly, and ecosystem resilience, we must understand the processes that generate biogeographic patterns, including phenotypic plasticity, local adaptation, dispersal, and biotic interactions.

This talk presents experimental biogeography as a process-oriented framework that integrates manipulative field experiments, common-garden and reciprocal transplant designs, and ecosystem-level interventions along environmental gradients. Recent work demonstrates how plastic responses can buffer populations against short-term environmental variability, how adaptive genetic variation is structured across landscapes, and how community context and trophic interactions mediate the expression and fitness consequences of adaptive traits. 

In an era of accelerating global transformation, experimental biogeography provides the empirical foundation needed to shift the discipline from explaining past patterns to predicting future biodiversity trajectories.