Scientific achievements

• Research on Evolutionarily Sustainable Consumption and the Integrated Assessment of Fishery Systems examine options and challenges for the development of aquatic food resources (Food and Water Research Area).
• Work on the Equitable Governance of Common Goods investigate how top-down regulations for managing common goods or open-access resources can be improved by integrative assessments of stakeholder conflicts and by scaling up successful characteristics of self-organized and resilient bottom-up governance (Poverty and Equity Research Area).
• Studies on the Eco-evolutionary Dynamics of Living Systems, on Systemic Risk and Network Dynamics, and on Evolutionary Vegetation Modeling and Management, open up new methodological avenues for the applied systems analysis of biodiversity, tangled interactions, and ecosystem dynamics (Advanced Systems Analysis Research Area).
• The process-based modeling approach of Evolutionary Vegetation Modeling and Management will enable novel features in next-generation dynamic global vegetation models, which are instrumental for assessing climate impacts (Energy and Climate Change Research Area).

Evolutionarily sustainable consumption

Research by the Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) on exploitation-induced evolution is assembling evidence and insights with respect to how human exploitation alters the heritable traits of targeted populations. Options are being developed on this basis for reducing unwanted alterations. More

Integrated assessment of fishery systems

Fisheries play a key role in food security worldwide, but many aquatic food resources are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. This reflects the failure of management systems devised to address competing demands on the multiple services rendered by aquatic ecosystems. More

Equitable governance of common goods

A new interdisciplinary cross-cutting project aims to narrow the gap between case studies and mathematical models by focusing on formal and informal institutions for overcoming the tragedy of the commons, using experimental games and agent-based models as stepping stones. More

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of living systems: Applications

Living systems undergo ecological and evolutionary change. Typically, ecological and evolutionary dynamics interact, giving rise to eco-evolutionary dynamics that cannot be understood in terms of either ecology or evolution alone. More

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of living systems: Theory

In 2014 Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) researchers further strengthened the individual-based foundations of ecological and evolutionary models. More

Systemic risk and network dynamics

The increasing interdependence of critical systems such as financial markets, food-supply chains, and energy grids poses new challenges for risk management, which must account for cascading failures propagating across a network of dependencies. More

Evolutionary vegetation modeling and management

Research by the Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) in 2014 continued to apply mathematical models to elucidate the formation and maintenance of vegetation diversity, structure, and functioning. More

Last edited: 26 March 2015