The Van Leeuwen Junior Group studies movement and interactions of plants and animals in freshwater ecosystems. We aim to understand how, why and when species move – and how their consequential presence or absence in ecosystems affects other species through species interactions.

Research

Freshwater ecosystems are species-rich, globally important natural systems that can provide many services to humans. However, many wetlands, rivers and lakes are threatened by human activity such as fragmentation, eutrophication, warming and introductions of invasive species. Our group investigates the capacity of species to cope with these global changes. We study the ability of plants and animals to spatially escape unfavourable circumstances by dispersing elsewhere, and how flexible species are in responding to new conditions and habitats that they may have to face. Currently much of our work occurs at the Marker Wadden in the Netherlands (read more at www.markerwaddenresearch.com). We use field- and lab-based experiments with aquatic plants and animals, population genetic analyses, acoustic telemetry of fish and advanced statistics – and address these questions on both ecological and evolutionary time scales.

Focal points of our research are:

  1. The aquatic food web of Marker Wadden: how species discover these newly created islands, how they make use of the newly encountered abiotic conditions and how they interact with other species in the food web - i.e. phytoplankton, zooplankton, macrophytes, fish and birds.
  2. The ability of plant seeds and aquatic invertebrates to disperse by using large, mobile vertebrate animals as vectors
  3. The response of fish populations to river fragmentation and active habitat restoration, and how this may have direct and indirect consequences on both ecological and evolutionary time scales
  4. How species respond to rising water temperatures, and how this may change their interactions with species in other trophic levels
  5. The dispersal and colonization of aquatic systems by invasive species, and the resilience of these ecosystems to their introductions.

More information on the interests of the group can be found at the start of this video that was made at a 2018 seminar, and all publications can be found on www.caspervanleeuwen.info.

Selected recent output:

  1. Van Leeuwen, C.H.A., Tella, J. L. & Green, A. J. (2020) Animal-Mediated Dispersal in Understudied Systems. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Ebook available here
  2. Martín-Vélez, V., Mohring, B., van Leeuwen, C. H. A., Shamoun-Baranes, J., Thaxter, C. B., Baert, J. M., Camphuysen, C. J. & Green, A. J. (2019)
    Functional connectivity network between terrestrial and aquatic habitats by a generalist waterbird, and implications for biovectoring.
    Science of the Total Environment 135886.
  3. J.P van Zuidam*, C.H.A. van Leeuwen*, E.S. Bakker, J.T.A. Verhoeven, S. IJff, E.T.H.M. Peeters, B.G. van Zuidam, M.B. Soons (2019) Plant functional diversity and nutrient availability can improve restoration of floating fens via facilitation, complementarity and selection effects, Journal of Applied Ecology *equal contributions
  4. C.H.A. van Leeuwen (2018) Internal and external dispersal of plants by animals: an aquatic perspective on alien interference, 9:153 Frontiers in Plant Sciences
  5. Van Leeuwen, C.H.A., K. Dalen, J. Museth, C. Junge and L.A. Vøllestad (2018) Habitat fragmentation has interactive effects on the population genetic diversity and individual behaviour of a freshwater salmonid fish, 34(1):60-68 River Research and Applications
  6. Van Leeuwen, C.H.A., Á. Lovas-Kiss, M. Ovegård and A.J. Green (2017) Great cormorants reveal overlooked secondary dispersal of plants and invertebrates by piscivorous waterbirds, 13(10): 20170406 Biology Letters

 

Current group members:

PhD student María José Navarro, Doñana Biological Station, Spain (supervisor)

PhD student Victor Martin, Doñana Biological Station, Spain (thesis committee)

PhD student Rosanne Beukeboom, University of Iceland, Iceland (thesis committee)

MSc student Andrea Mulder

MSc student Dagmar Bogers

MSc student Niu Shu

 

The group is associated to the Bakker Group