Publications by Francesco Carrara

Multiscale Porosity Microfluidics to Study Bacterial Transport in Heterogeneous Chemical Landscapes

Microfluidic models are proving to be powerful systems to study fundamental processes in porous media, due to their ability to replicate topologically complex environments while allowing detailed, quantitative observations at the pore scale. Yet, while por ...

Wiley2024

Geomorphic controls on elevational gradients of species richness

Andrea Rinaldo, Enrico Bertuzzo, Lorenzo Mari, Francesco Carrara, Florian Altermatt

Elevational gradients of biodiversity have been widely investigated, and yet a clear interpretation of the biotic and abiotic factors that determine how species richness varies with elevation is still elusive. In mountainous landscapes, habitats at differe ...

Natl Acad Sciences2016

Inferring species interactions in ecological communities: a comparison of methods at different levels of complexity

Andrea Rinaldo, Francesco Carrara, Andrea Giometto, Florian Altermatt

Natural communities commonly contain many different species and functional groups, and multiple types of species interactions act simultaneously, such as competition, predation, commensalism or mutualism. However, experimental and theoretical investigat ...

Wiley-Blackwell2015

Experimental evidence for strong stabilizing forces at high functional diversity of aquatic microbial communities

Andrea Rinaldo, Francesco Carrara, Andrea Giometto, Florian Altermatt

Unveiling the mechanisms that promote coexistence in biological communities is a fundamental problem in ecology. Stable coexistence of many species is commonly observed in natural communities. Most of these natural communities, however, are composed of spe ...

Ecological Soc Amer2015

Complex Interaction of Dendritic Connectivity and Hierarchical Patch Size on Biodiversity in River-Like Landscapes

Andrea Rinaldo, Francesco Carrara, Andrea Giometto, Florian Altermatt

Habitat fragmentation and land use changes are causing major biodiversity losses. Connectivity of the landscape or environmental conditions alone can shape biodiversity patterns. In nature, however, local habitat characteristics are often intrinsically lin ...

Univ Chicago Press2014

Scaling body size fluctuations

Andrea Rinaldo, Francesco Carrara, Amos Maritan, Andrea Giometto, Florian Altermatt

The size of an organism matters for its metabolic, growth, mortality, and other vital rates. Scale-free community size spectra (i.e., size distributions regardless of species) are routinely observed in natural ecosystems and are the product of intra- and i ...

National Academy of Sciences2013

Theoretical and Experimental Studies of Dendritic Metacommunities

Francesco Carrara

The present thesis deals with the understanding of the origins and the mechanisms of maintenance of biodiversity in natural landscapes, in particular by identifying key processes that define large-scale patterns of abundance and diversity. Biological commu ...

EPFL2013

Emerging predictable features of replicated biological invasion fronts

Andrea Rinaldo, Francesco Carrara, Andrea Giometto, Florian Altermatt

Biological dispersal shapes species' distribution and affects their coexistence. The spread of organisms governs the dynamics of invasive species, the spread of pathogens, and the shifts in species ranges due to climate or environmental change. Despite its ...

National Academy of Sciences2013

Dendritic connectivity controls biodiversity patterns in experimental metacommunities

Andrea Rinaldo, Francesco Carrara, Florian Altermatt

Biological communities often occur in spatially structured habitats where connectivity directly affects dispersal and metacommunity processes. Recent theoretical work suggests that dispersal constrained by the connectivity of specific habitat structures, s ...

National Academy of Sciences2012

Effects of Connectivity and Recurrent Local Disturbances on Community Structure and Population Density in Experimental Metacommunities

Andrea Rinaldo, Francesco Carrara, Florian Altermatt

Metacommunity theory poses that the occurrence and abundance of species is a product of local factors, including disturbance, and regional factors, like dispersal among patches. While metacommunity ideas have been broadly tested there is relatively little ...

Public Library of Science2011