Effects of habitat destruction and restoration on ecological communities

Klementyna Gawecka, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow at UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) 

Wednesday 21st May, 1-2pm, Cottrell 2V1 and streamed on Teams (contact the seminar organiser for the Teams link).

This seminar is open to all staff, students and affiliates of the University of Stirling. The seminar is hosted by Biological and Environmental Sciences (BES).

Who this might appeal to: This talk is about the response of ecological communities to habitat destruction and restoration. I will show how ecological models can provide insights into the complex mechanisms involved and inform conservation and restoration planning. The talk will be of interest to ecology students and researchers, as well as a general audience with interest in nature conservation and restoration.

Abstract: Habitat loss remains one of the leading drivers of biodiversity decline. In response, landscape-scale ecological restoration has emerged as a key strategy to address this crisis. Yet, much of conservation and restoration practice continues to focus on individual species. This species-level perspective often overlooks the fact that species exist within complex ecological communities, shaped by a web of interactions. The loss or recovery of one species can propagate through the community, creating cascading effects that are difficult to predict without a community-level perspective.

To ensure long-term community persistence and resilience, conservation actions must account for both the spatial structure of landscapes and the network of interactions among species. Understanding how communities respond to habitat destruction and restoration across space is therefore crucial for designing effective interventions. In this talk, I will show how ecological models—grounded in metacommunity and network theory—can help disentangle these complex dynamics. By capturing species interactions and spatial processes, these models offer powerful tools for predicting the ecological consequences of habitat change, and guiding more informed, effective conservation and restoration strategies.

Bio: I hold a Master’s and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Imperial College London, where I continued as a Teaching Fellow following my doctoral studies. In 2019, driven by my growing interest in ecology and conservation I pursued a Master’s in Quantitative Environmental Sciences Master’s at the University of Zurich. I then joined the theoretical ecology group led by Prof Jordi Bascompte as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2024, I was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Prof James Bullock at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH). I am currently based at the UKCEH Edinburgh site.

My research explores the responses of ecological communities to environmental change, with a focus on the interplay between species interactions and their influence on community dynamics. I am especially interested in understanding the consequences of habitat loss and restoration. To accomplish this, I employ computational models that integrate concepts of metacommunity and network theory. I approach my research with an engineering mindset – using scientific theory to disentangle complex processes, with the goal of using the insights gained to inform effective management, conservation, and restoration strategies.