(EN)

The team « Vertebrate biogeography and ecology » is both a lab of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (section Earth and Life Sciences) and a team of the department « Biodiversity and Conservation » within the CEFE (UMR5175).

Three thightly linked research axes are developed in the team:

1. Landscape changes (for example the regression of open areas due to agricultural demise in the north, or the decline of forested areas in the south), past and current climatic changes, and violent perturbations such as wildfires (which often result from the interactions with the previous factors) have always been strong constraints for Mediterranean vertebrates. Our first research axis is to evaluate their consequences and analyse species responses.
2. Our second research axis consists in the study of Mediterranean vertebrate biogeography and phylogeography (especially for taxa which are rare, threatened, with high patrimonial value, or with fragmented or insular distribution), the origin and structure of fauna, expansions, secondary contacts, retractions, fragmentation, and local extinctions and their causes. This axis has obvious interactions with the other two.
3. Our third axis of research is the study of populations of vertebrate species with high patrimonial value, rare or threatened, the identification of evolutionary significant units, the development or evaluation of methods of monitoring or of demographic modelling adapted to theses species, the evaluation of conservation and management measures in relation with the organisms in charge with biodiversity and protected areas. 

Reach the collection: Amphibians and Reptiles of the occidental palearctic.