Summary
Jason M. Tylianakis examines how communities of interacting species respond to environmental changes. In particular, he is interested in how the architecture of interaction networks (such as food webs or pollination networks) comes to exist, and how it responds to environmental drivers. He is also interested in the conditions under which biodiversity loss has the greatest impact on ecosystem functioning and services, and in searching for win-win scenarios to balance agricultural production and conservation. In some cases, these questions require knowledge of how species traits and the local environment jointly shape the structure of interaction networks such as food webs, and how this structure affects processes at the entire community level. He addresses these questions using a variety of systems (plants, insect herbivores, parasitoid-host systems, plant-mycorrhizal associations) and approaches (field observations, field and lab experiments, meta-analysis).
He holds a joint appointment between Imperial College, Silwood Park and the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (See his research group here), where he is currently a Rutherford Discovery Fellow. He is also on the editorial boards of Journal of Animal Ecology, the New Zealand Journal of Ecology, and Malaysian Applied Biology. His work has been highlighted in the Nature podcast, a Thompson Sciencewatch 'New Hot Paper', BBC World Science News, The Guardian, Le Monde, ABC Australia, and other news media.
Jason completed his PhD at the University of Goettingen in Germany, under the supervision of Teja Tscharntke, examining how land-use change in Ecuador affected the diversity and trophic interactions of cavity-nesting bees and wasps. He did his Masters at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, under the joint supervision of Raphael Didham and Steve Wratten, looking at using floral resources for the augmentation of parasitoids in biological control. Immediately following his PhD, he began a faculty position at the University of Canterbury.
Publications
Journals
Cantwell-Jones A, Tylianakis J, Larson K, et al., 2024, Using individual-based trait frequency distributions to forecast plant-pollinator network responses to environmental change, Ecology Letters, Vol:27, ISSN:1461-023X
Ramana JV, Tylianakis JM, Ridgway HJ, et al., 2023, Root diameter, host specificity and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community composition among native and exotic plant species, New Phytologist, Vol:239, ISSN:0028-646X, Pages:301-310
Peralta G, Webber CJ, Perry GLW, et al., 2023, Scale-dependent effects of landscape structure on pollinator traits, species interactions and pollination success, Ecography, ISSN:0906-7590
Cantwell-Jones A, Larson K, Ward A, et al., 2023, Mapping trait versus species turnover reveals spatiotemporal variation in functional redundancy and network robustness in a plant-pollinator community, Functional Ecology, Vol:37, ISSN:0269-8463, Pages:748-762
Harvey JA, Tougeron K, Gols R, et al., 2023, Scientists' warning on climate change and insects, Ecological Monographs, Vol:93, ISSN:0012-9615