Christian König

PhD student

Research Interests
Modern biogeographical research is a fascinating field which utilizes concepts and techniques from a variety of biological subdisciplines, ranging from ecology to genetics through to biodiversity informatics. It is this interdisciplinary, yet highly distinctive approach which motivated my PhD studies at the University of Göttingen. My research aims at elucidating the factors and processes that shape vascular plant communities on islands. One of the main objectives is to disentangle the contributions of dispersal filtering, environmental filtering and in situ diversification to the diversity patterns we observe today. I am particularly interested in how these processes affect different aspects of diversity, i.e. the taxonomic, functional or phylogenetic structure of island plant communities.

Education
2015 - present - PhD program "Biological Diversity and Ecology", University of Göttingen
2012 - 2015 - M.Sc. program "Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution", University of Göttingen
Summary: Attaining a deep understanding of biological diversity and ecosystem processes through courses in plant ecology, biogeography and ecological modelling as well as field excursions to Costa Rica and Croatia.
2008 - 2012 - B.Sc. program "Environmental monitoring", HTW Dresden (University of Applied Sciences)
Summary: Building a strong foundation in natural sciences through training in mathematics, physics and chemistry, combined with a distinct focus on applied ecology and nature conservation.

Publications
Master Thesis
König, C. (2014): Assessing peculiarities of island floras: A global analysis of taxonomic and functional disharmony in vascular plants. University of Göttingen. Supervisors: Prof. Dr. H. Kreft, Prof. Dr. E. Bergmeier