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Prof. Dr. Ursula Gaedke

Prof. Dr. Ursula Gaedke

Campus Botanischer Garten
University of Potsdam
Ecology and Ecosystem Modelling
Maulbeerallee 2, building 2, room 2.04
14469 Potsdam

Research foci 

We study plankton communities and food webs by combining field observations, laboratory experiments, and process-oriented mathematical models to contribute to ecological theory building and to the solution of urgent ecological problems such as the consequences of biodiversity loss and robustness against perturbations. The core areas of my research are:

Due to their high diversity and short generation times, plankton communities can quickly adapt their functional properties to fluctuating abiotic and biotic conditions. This influences their biomass dynamics and the maintenance of their functional biodiversity. In addition, interesting feedback loops arise between the dynamics in the biomasses and the functional properties of the individual populations. If we consider variability in functional properties within populations and communities not as noise or nuisance but as an inherent property, we can better understand the biodiversity and dynamics observed in natural and experimental systems.

  • Quantitative food web ecology and drivers of seasonal plankton dynamics.

Species resolved, long-term, high frequency measurements of the biomasses and production of the entire plankton food web of large, deep Lake Constance combined with data on abiotic forcing  allow us to study the properties and stability of seasonally resolved, quantitative food web models and to better understand the drivers of seasonal plankton dynamics using e.g. trait-based approaches and advanced methods of time series analysis.  

Species interactions significantly influence the dynamics of populations and communities and are a central topic in ecological and evolutionary research. While many ecological theories assume that interaction types – such as predator-prey or mutualism – are fixed, an increasing number of studies show that they can depend on environmental conditions and population densities. However, this context dependence is rarely integrated into general theories of population regulation and community structure, despite its importance for predicting responses to environmental change. The proposed research group aims to close this gap by incorporating density-dependent symbioses into existing theories of community ecology.

Website Gaedke

Prof. Dr. Ursula Gaedke

Campus Botanischer Garten
University of Potsdam
Ecology and Ecosystem Modelling
Maulbeerallee 2, building 2, room 2.04
14469 Potsdam

Scientific career path and short CV in German (PDF) or English (PDF).

Publications

The full publication list is available from Google scholar and see my profile on Research Gate. For download of pdfs see also the publication list of my working groupor access publications in Arch. Hydrobiol. Spec. Issues: Advances in Limnology 53 here:

  • Gaedke, U., D. Ollinger, E. Bäuerle and D. Straile (1998) The impact of weather conditions on the seasonal plankton development. Arch. Hydrobiol. Spec. Issues: Advances in Limnology 53: 565-585. Pdf full-text
  • Gaedke, U. and T. Weisse (1998) Seasonal and interannual variability of picocyanobacteria in Lake Constance (1987-1996) Arch. Hydrobiol. Spec. Issues: Advances in Limnology 53: 143-158. Pdf full-text
  • Gaedke, U. and D. Straile (1998) Daphnids: Keystone species for the pelagic food web structure and energy flow - A body size related analysis linking seasonal changes on the population and ecosystem level. Arch. Hydrobiol. Spec. Issues: Advances in Limnology 53: 587-610. Pdf full-text
  • Gaedke, U. (1998 b) The response of the pelagic community of a large and deep lake (L. Constance) to reoligotrophication: Evidence for scale-dependent hierarchical patterns. Arch. Hydrobiol. Spec. Issues: Advances in Limnology 53: 317-333. Pdf full-text
  • Gaedke, U. (1998 a) Functional and taxonomical properties of the phytoplankton community: Interannual variability and response to re-oligotrophication. Arch. Hydrobiol. Spec. Issues: Advances in Limnology 53: 119-141. Pdf full-text
  • Häse, C., U. Gaedke, B. Beese, A. Seifried and M. Tilzer (1998) Phytoplankton response to reoligotrophication in large and deep Lake Constance: Photosynthetic activity and chlorophyll concentration. Arch. Hydrobiol. Spec. Issues: Advances in Limnology 53: 159-178. Pdf full-text

Selected key publications:

  • Becks, L., U. Gaedke & T. Klauschies (2025) Emergent feedback between symbiosis form and population dynamics, TREE, Volume 40, Issue 5, May 2025, Pages 449-459.
  • Gaedke, U., X. Li, C. Guill, L. Hemerik, and P. C. de Ruiter (2025) Seasonal shifts in trophic interaction strength drive stability of natural food webs. Ecol. Lett. e70075, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.70075; permanent link preprint Authorea: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.172535913.30167932/v1
  • Li, X., T. Klauschies, W. Yang, Z. Yang & U. Gaedke (2023) Trait adaptation enhances species coexistence and reduces bistability in an intraguild predation module. Ecol. Evol. 13:e9749.
  • Kath, N., M. Thomas & U. Gaedke (2022) Mysterious ciliates: seasonally recurrent and yet hard to predict. J. Plankton Res. 44: 891-910.
  • Ceulemans, R., C. Guill, and U. Gaedke (2021) Top predators govern multitrophic diversity effects in tritrophic food webs. Ecology 102(7) e03379.
  • Ehrlich, E. & U. Gaedke (2020) Coupled changes in traits and biomasses cascading through a tritrophic plankton food web. Limnology and Oceanography 65: 2502-2514.
  • Ehrlich, E., N. Kath & U. Gaedke (2020) The shape of a defense-growth trade-off governs seasonal trait dynamics in natural phytoplankton. The ISME Journal 14: 1451-1462.
  • Blasius, B., L. Rudolf, G. Weithoff, U. Gaedke & G. Fussmann (2020). Long-term cyclic persistence in an experimental predator-prey system. Nature 577: 226-230.
  • Boit, A. & U. Gaedke (2014) Benchmarking Successional Progress in a Quantitative Food Web. PLoS One 9(2): e90404
  • Tirok, K. & U. Gaedke (2010) Internally driven alternation of functional traits in a multi-species predator-prey system. Ecology 91: 1748-1762
  • Vasseur, D. & U. Gaedke (2007) Spectral analysis unmasks synchronous and compensatory dynamics in plankton communities. Ecology 88: 2058-2071.
  • Gaedke, U., S. Hochstädter, and D. Straile (2002) Interplay between energy limitation and nutritional deficiency: Empirical data and food web models. Ecological Monographs 72: 251-270
  • Gaedke, U. (1992). The size distribution of plankton biomass in a large lake and its seasonal variability. Limnol. & Oceanogr. 37: 1202-1220.

Here is a full publication list of my working group and the publication list DynaTrait 

I'm happy to send single PDFs per email.