pstaniczenko

Main profile

Staniczenko, Phillip P.A.

Assistant Professor, City University of New York, Brooklyn College

pstaniczenko@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Predicting the effects of environmental change on natural ecosystems

My work examines the effect of anthropogenic change on ecological networks representing interactions between species in a community. I aim to develop new techniques for analysing large and complex multispecies data. By bridging theory and empirical work, I hope to advance our understanding of community ecology and improve our ability to predict the effects of environmental change on natural ecosystems.

At SESYNC, I am developing a new mathematical and computational framework that links species distribution models and weighted interaction network models using preference matrices to represent ecological mechanisms.

Society relies on ecosystem services arising from biotic interactions such as crop pollination by insects and biological pest control by natural predators. Urbanisation, climate change and deforestation are rapidly decreasing the provision of these ecosystem services, but their specific effects are difficult to trace due to multiple feedbacks within complex socio-environmental systems. Decision-makers need better, actionable models to inform policies involving ecosystem services. One hurdle is that two potentially useful types of model are being developed in isolation from one another. Species distribution models are being developed by biogeographers to predict how changes in environmental variables affect the geographical distribution of individual species. Weighted interaction network models are being developed by community ecologists to predict how changes in the behaviour of multiple species following habitat modification affect interaction patterns and resulting ecosystem services. When combined, these two types of model will directly relate human-driven environmental changes to the provision of ecosystem services.

Selected publications

• Caravelli, F. & Staniczenko, P.P.A. 2016
  Bounds on transient instability for complex ecosystems
  PLOS ONE, 11, 6

• Staniczenko, P.P.A., Smith, M.J. & Allesina, S. 2014
  Selecting food web models using normalized maximum likelihood
  Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 5, 551–562

• Staniczenko, P.P.A., Kopp, J.C. & Allesina, S. 2013
  The ghost of nestedness in ecological networks
  Nature Communications, 4, 1931

• Staniczenko, P.P.A., Lewis, O.T., Jones, N.S. & Reed-Tsochas, F. 2010
  Structural dynamics and robustness of food webs
  Ecology Letters, 13, 891–899

Full publication list

Previous positions

• 2013–2015 Research Fellow. Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, University College London.
• 2013–2014 Consultant. Urban Pollinators Project, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.
• 2011–2013 Postdoctoral Researcher. Allesina Lab, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago.

Education

• 2007–2010 DPhil Condensed Matter Physics, University of Oxford (Wolfson College). Department of Physics and Cabdyn Complexity Centre at Saïd Business School.
• 2003–2007 MPhys Undergraduate Masters in Physics, First Class Honours, University of Oxford (St. Anne's College).

Cohort: 2016

Resources
Video: Introduction to Ecological Networks	Nov 18, 2020 This tutorial video explains what ecological networks are, why they’re useful, and where the field is heading next.
Social ties explain catch portfolios of small‐scale fishers in the Caribbean	Oct 31, 2019 Article published in Fish and Fisheries.
A systems approach reveals urban pollinator hotspots and conservation opportunities	Jan 14, 2019 Article published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Negative biotic interactions drive predictions of distributions for species from a grassland community	Nov 14, 2018 Article published in Biology Letters.
Predicting the effect of habitat modification on networks of interacting species	Oct 06, 2017 Article published in Nature Communications.
Invasion speeds in microbial systems with toxin production and quorum sensing	May 01, 2017 Article published in Journal of Theoretical Biology.
Linking macroecology and community ecology: refining predictions of species distributions using biotic interaction networks	Apr 21, 2017 Article published in Ecology Letters.
Bounds on Transient Instability for Complex Ecosystems	Jun 21, 2016 Article published in PLoS ONE.

Links: 

Personal research website

Research Interest: 

Ecological networks