Laboratoire d’Écologie Alpine (UMR 5553)

We wish in particular to adress present and crucial environmental issues such as global change, loss of biodiversity and low-level chronic pollution. Our skills are centred on ecology, environment and evolution sciences. Following the definition of biodiversity, our study scales range from genes to ecosystems and landscapes, including processes at each scale. Our originality stems from the model system we focus on: mountains. This choice was made based on local territorial coherence, but mostly because these environments and the species that inhabit them are particularly sensitive and vulnerable to global environmental changes. We are one of the few laboratories in France with a primary focus on mountain systems. One aim is to describe the variation of different aspects of biodiversity (specific, functional and phylogenetic) along environmental gradients and their co-variation across spatial scales and trophic levels, to study the response of species to environmental changes. This information will be used to build robust biodiversity scenarios integrating intra-specific responses, rapid evolution and biotic interactions. We are also interested on the functional implications of plants and subordinated organisms for the major biogeochemical cycles (C,N and water).