Florian Hartig

About me

I am a theoretical ecologist and ecological data scientist. I currently act as head of the Theoretical Ecology Group, as well as interim head of the Chair for Plant Ecology, Deputy Dean of Research of the Faculty of Biology and Preclinical Medicine, and coordinator and head of the examination committee of the M.Sc. programme Ecology, Evolution & Conservation (EEC).

Research

With my research group, I study the mechanisms and principles underlying the patterns of biodiversity in ecology, evolution and conservation, using computer simulations, statistical methods and, more recently, algorithms from machine learning and artificial intelligence. A particular focus of our work is understanding the mechanisms underlying community assembly and the emergence of biotic interaction networks, but also macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns such as species distributions and diversification patterns.

Recurring themes across this work:

• Community assembly and biotic interaction networks
• Biodiversity patterns at community, biogeographic and evolutionary scales
• Species distribution models and diversification dynamics
• Simulation-based inference and Bayesian statistics
• Machine learning and deep learning applications in ecology