Of the three dimensions of biodiversity, composition, structure and function, the latter is probably the least understood. Certainly, a proper examination of composition and structure may provide robust hypotheses on the subjacent processes at the levels of genes, populations, species, communities or landscapes. However, such correlational approaches need to be corroborated by experimental evidence. The mission of the Functional Biodiversity (FBIO) group within CIBIO-InBIO is, hence, experimentally inferring the functional roles of the elements composing Biodiversity (from genes to landscapes). Under a scientific method outline, hypothesis-driven studies and experimental tests are preferred over observational inductive methodologies.

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Research is focused on the ecological and short-term evolutionary dynamics of organisms with the abiotic environment as well as with other organisms either conspecifics, competitors, predators or parasites. This mechanistic approach departs from the individual organismal traits going upwards to the consequences on the population dynamics, community and landscape processes and downwards to the metabolic functions, developmental shifts and ultimately the genes responsible for them. Because all these functions may have evolved in response to past pressures rather than to current selective forces a clear phylogenetic reconstruction of the organisms under study and their paleoenvironments is needed to properly interpret the results.