4月25日CLS:Biodiversity and the stability of ecological systems: resolving an old debate

Michel Loreau is emeritus researcher at the Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Moulis (France) and adjunct professor at Peking University (Beijing, China). 
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the Academia Europaea, an honorary member of the British Ecological Society. He is currently a member of the editorial and advisory boards of PLoS Biology, head of the section Community Ecology and Biodiversity of The Faculty of 1000, and recommender of PCIEcology.
Michel Loreau is the author of over 400 scientific publications, among which 10 books and numerous papers in the top disciplinary and multidisciplinary journals (9 in Nature, 15 in other Nature journals, 8 in Science, 11 in PNAS, 39 in Ecology Letters, ect). His research goal is to build the theoretical foundations of a new ecological synthesis that integrates the divergent perspectives of community ecology, evolutionary ecology and ecosystem ecology.  He attaches great importance to a tight interaction between the mathematical models he develops and empirical or experimental work on a wide range of ecosystems.
His main research theme during the past twenty years has been the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and the ecological and societal consequences of biodiversity loss. He has also laid the theoretical foundations of three new research fields that address the spatial, evolutionary and societal dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: metacommunity and metaecosystem ecology, evolutionary ecosystem ecology, and the dynamics and sustainability of human-nature interactions. Lastly, he has championed an integrative biodiversity science that transcends disciplinary boundaries.
His work has exerted a profound influence over the development of ecology during the last decades. Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics ranked him among the world’s most highly cited researchers in the field of environment and ecology for sixteen years.