Current research
My research interests lie in various aspects of community ecology, with understanding of community organization and functioning as unifying thread.
I tackled community ecology through studies of habitat selection by breeding birds in mosaic forests, and spatial distribution of herpetofauna in tropical forests. My current main theme of research is food-web ecology. This involves theoretical research on food-web structure and dynamics, and empirical and experimental works in natural and agricultural landscapes, as well as in mesocosms. I am also interested in biodiversity theories, particularly in models of species abundances. Finally, I love collaborating on various aspects of ecology, notably on functional response in predator-prey systems, on effects of ectoparasites on reproduction in birds, or on models of population dynamics.
Curriculum vitae
| 1986-1987 | Diploma in biology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland |
| 1987-1993 | Ph.D. in natural sciences, University of Fribourg, Switzerland |
| 1994-1995 | Postdoc, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, USA |
| 1996-2004 | Lecturer, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland |
| 2001-2005 | Postdoc, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland |
| 2005-present | Professor at the Unit of Ecology & Evolution, University of Fribourg, Switzerland |
Representative publications (full list with pdfs)
Naisbit R.E., Rohr R.P., Rossberg A.G., Kehrli P., Bersier
L.-F. (2012) Phylogeny versus body size as determinants of food
web structure. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 279:
3291-3297.
Naisbit R.E., Kehrli P., Rohr R.P., Bersier L.-F. (2011)
Phylogenetic signal in predator-prey body-size relationships.
Ecology, 92: 2183-2189.
Rohr R.P., Scherer H., Kehrli P., Mazza C., Bersier L.-F.
(2010) Modeling food webs: Exploring unexplained structure using
latent traits. American Naturalist, 176: 170-177.
Cattin M.-F., Bersier L.-F., Banašek-Richter C., Baltensperger
R. and Gabriel, J.-P. (2004) Phylogenetic constraints and
adaptation explain food web structure. Nature, 427: 835-839.
Sugihara G., Bersier L.-F., Southwood, T.R.E., Pimm, S.L., and May, R.M. (2003) Predicted correspondence between species abundances and dendrograms of niche similarities. PNAS, 100: 5246-5251.
Bersier L.-F., Banašek-Richter C. and Cattin M.-F. (2002) Quantitative descriptors of food web matrices. Ecology, 83: 2394-2407.