Here you will find the program, invited speakers and testimonials of attendees about their experiences in our workshops.
Here you will find the program, invited speakers and testimonials of attendees about their experiences in our workshops.
Lunchbox Models
"All models are wrong,
but some are delicious!"
new online seminar series on ecological modelling & academia
hosted by the GfÖ working groups Computational Ecology & YoMos
Let's create a space to explore ecological models, discuss academic life and build community - and all of that during lunch break!
The concept: ​
The working groups Computational Ecology and Young Modellers in Ecology (YoMos) of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ) are very happy to invite you to the new “Lunchbox Models” online seminar series. Every last Wednesday of the month, we make use of the lunch break and explore the latest research in ecological modelling with an invited guest speaker, following our motto “All models are wrong but some are delicious!”. Just take your lunch, open our Zoom link, enjoy the talk and the scientific discussion - and if you are a junior researcher, stay online for our meet-the-speaker session to discuss challenges in academia and career - focusing on a different topic every seminar! With this seminar series, we want to provide a platform for connection and exchange between scientists in the field of ecological modelling at various career stages in the GfÖ and beyond!​
Follow Computational Ecology on Mastodon [tba]
Schedule 2025/2026: Wednesday, 12 AM - 2 PM CET
29.10.25
Hanna Meyer
Münster University
Scientific Talk:
Remote sensing and machine learning for spatial mapping of the environment
Meet the Speaker:
Advice on career tracks in academia
Mapping environmental variables continuously across space and time is a key challenge in environmental science and provides essential baseline information to support a monitoring in the context of climate change, the progressive degradation of ecosystems, or the rapid loss of biodiversity. However, most environmental variables are typically acquired through field work, which only provides data with a limited spatial extent, such as from climate stations, soil profiles or plot-based vegetation records. Remote sensing and machine learning algorithms have emerged as powerful tools in this domain, enabling the prediction of environmental variables in areas where direct measurements are unavailable. In this way, a large variety environmental monitoring products have been developed, even ambitiously on a global scale. However, recent research has also shown that the use of machine learning for large-scale mapping poses significant challenges due to the characteristics of remote sensing datasets and the limited number and biased spatial distribution of reference data. These challenges include reliable model validation, avoidance of spatial overfitting as well as the assessment of spatial transferability of the models. This presentation aims to raise awareness of these challenges and propose ideas to overcome them, with the goal of developing more robust spatial environmental datasets needed for ongoing monitoring of environmental changes.
26.11.25
Vasilis Dakos
CNRS, University of Montpellier
Scientific Talk:
Detecting fisheries productivity trajectories at-risk to abrupt shifts
​
Fish population biomass fluctuates through time in ways that may be either gradual or abrupt. While abrupt shifts in fish population productivity have been shown to be common, they are rarely integrated into stock assessment or fishery management, in part because of the difficulty of predicting when abrupt shifts may occur and which stocks are prone to such shifts. We propose to address this challenge by designing a mechanism-agnostic context-specific approach that is based on exploiting the dynamical properties of fish population fluctuations for detecting potential abrupt shifts. In this talk, I will present how our approach works using time series of fish population biomass from three global datasets, first, for classifying their shapes into abrupt and non-abrupt classes, and, second, for predicting classified shapes based only on their dynamical footprint.
28.01.26
Elisa Thébault
Sorbonne Université,
iEES Paris
Scientific Talk:
Species diversity, food web structure and ecosystem stability: Bridging the gap between theory and data
Meet the Speaker:
Linking models and data
- How to get started?
The consequences of diversity and food web structure on the stability of ecological communities have been debated for more than 5 decades. While the understanding of the relation between diversity and the stability of properties at community and ecosystem levels has gained from joint empirical, experimental and theoretical insights, the question of the relation between food web structure and stability has received almost exclusively theoretical attention. The lack of empirical studies on this issue is partly due to the fact that theoretical studies are often disconnected from the stability of natural ecosystems, and to the difficulty of describing and manipulating food web structure in the field. Here I will present results based on both theoretical food web models and data analyses of time-series of fish communities across France, aiming to investigate in parallel the relations between diversity, food web structure and the stability of ecosystem properties.
25.02.26
Boris Schröder-Esselbach
TU Berlin
Scientific Talk:
Ecological modelling provides key contributions to coastal ecology:
Coastal ecosystem services and the restoration of seagrass meadows
Meet the Speaker:
Doctoral scholarships
(in german academic system)
​
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The talk will provide insights into the use of ecological models in coastal ecology. Coastal ecosystems provide a wide range of ecosystem services, such as forage production on coastal pastures and water regulation by polders, which have been studied in the COMTESS project. Applying a chain of hydrological, ecological and socio-economic models we predicted the impact of changing climate, sea level rise and land use on groundwater level and salinity, plant species composition and ecosystem service provision until the end of the century. This allowed analysing trade-offs between individual ecosystem services as well as comparing alter-native land management options over time and providing land management recommendations to local stake-holders. Seagrass meadows promote biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services such as sediment stabilisation and carbon sequestration. They are thus suitable components of nature-based solutions to enhance coastal resilience. Common eelgrass, Zostera marina, has suffered a significant loss of habitat, particularly in the Baltic Sea, but recent improvements in water quality provide a good starting point for advancing conservation and restoration. Therefore, the SeaStore project aims to establish the scientific basis for robust, scientifically sound and effective seagrass restoration in southern Baltic waters. Various modelling approaches contribute to this aim. Species distribution models help to understand the ecological niche of seagrass and to identify suitable reintroduction sites by explicitly predicting habitat suitability based on hydrodynamic conditions, light availability, and salinity, i.e. key environmental variables limiting the distribution of seagrass. In addition, we used a similar approach - so-called trait-distribution models - for predicting the characteristics of seagrass plants and seagrass beds as a prerequisite for estimating the provision of ecosystem services to be expected after successful restoration. To determine hydrodynamic thresholds for seagrass reintroduction, experiments were conducted in a wave flume as a physical model. The different models and the results of the wave flume experiments will be integrated into a decision support system, which will support decision-makers in planning seagrass restoration measures and provide outreach materials for coastal communities for raising awareness of seagrass meadows and their ecosystem services in coastal protection and climate change adaptation.
25.03.26
Nicolas Loeuille
Sorbonne Université,
iEES Paris
Scientific Talk:
Effects of spatial heterogeneity on eco-evolutionary dynamics (and its implications from a management point of view)
Meet the Speaker:
Work-life balance in the context of academia
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This talk will have an abstract. It will focus on all the important aspects of the presentation. How great! But it takes up lots of space, so we decided to put it in a collapsable item.
29.04.26
postponed!
Scientific Talk:
n.a.
Meet the Speaker:
n.a.
​
This talk will have an abstract. It will focus on all the important aspects of the presentation. How great! But it takes up lots of space, so we decided to put it in a collapsable item.
27.05.26
Meike Wittmann
Bielefeld University
Scientific Talk:
Incorporating individual trait variation and niche processes into population dynamics and species interaction models
Meet the Speaker:
Learning strategies and knowledge management
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In this talk, I will present a general framework via which we can incorporate individual trait variation as well as the niche processes of niche conformance (phenotypic plasticity) and niche construction into population models and species interaction models. This can be done via individual-based simulations or numerical methods, but we also provide Taylor approximations that provide more intuitive insight. I will also outline how the effects of individual variation and niche processes on species interactions can be estimated from empirical data.
24.06.26
Frank Hilker
Osnabrück University
Scientific Talk:
tba
Meet the Speaker:
tba
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This talk will have an abstract. It will focus on all the important aspects of the presentation. How great! But it takes up lots of space, so we decided to put it in a collapsable item.
29.07.26
Thomas Hickler
Senckenberg Centre for Biodiversity and Climate Research
Scientific Talk:
tba
Meet the Speaker:
tba
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This talk will have an abstract. It will focus on all the important aspects of the presentation. How great! But it takes up lots of space, so we decided to put it in a collapsable item.
26.08.26
Damaris Zurell
Potsdam University
Scientific Talk:
tba
Meet the Speaker:
tba
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This talk will have an abstract. It will focus on all the important aspects of the presentation. How great! But it takes up lots of space, so we decided to put it in a collapsable item.
30.09.26
Jelena Pantel
Univsité Marie et Louis Pasteur, Besançon
Scientific Talk:
tba
Meet the Speaker:
tba
​
This talk will have an abstract. It will focus on all the important aspects of the presentation. How great! But it takes up lots of space, so we decided to put it in a collapsable item.