School of Life Sciences

School of Life Sciences

Sofie Spatharis

My research is focused on the understanding of ecological processes that shape coastal marine communities and sustain their diversity. I am interested in processes relating species-interactions with environmental stressors such as extreme disturbances, eutrophication, and climate change. To-date, I have applied a range of quantitative tools including statistical approaches and dynamic modelling as well as experimental approaches and field monitoring to investigate patterns and assembly rules in natural communities such as phytoplankton, macroalgae and bacteria. My program embraces different levels of biological organisation including characterisations of individual species, population dynamics and community ecology. I aim to understand mechanisms affecting the organisation of populations and communities in the short- and long-term, at both local (patch) and regional (metacommunity) scales.