Prof. Dr. Alexander Keller

Short profile

Vergrößern

I am an ecologist and bioinformatician studying how biodiversity is organised, maintained, and reshaped under global change. My work focuses especially on terrestrial ecosystems, species interaction networks, and mutualistic relationships such as plant pollinator interactions.

I am interested in how land-use change, climatic variability, and ecological restoration restructure ecological communities and alter the interactions among species. A central question in my research is whether ecosystems recover after disturbance, reorganise into new configurations, or lose functional connectivity across landscapes. To address this, I study resource landscapes, facilitation processes, interaction asymmetries, and the mechanisms that shape biodiversity across environmental and successional gradients. My research spans temperate, tropical, and subtropical systems and is embedded in international collaborations. A central goal is to understand how biodiversity functions, how it responds to human driven environmental change, and how ecological knowledge can support the conservation and restoration of natural systems.

I am also driven by a strong interest in emerging technologies and the computational challenges they bring, especially where molecular tools, drone-based surveys, bioinformatics, and deep-learning can help us observe, monitor and protect biodiversity in new ways.

I am currently involved in several collaborative research frameworks, including REASSEMBLY (https://www.reassembly.de), ANDIV (https://www.andiv.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/), ProPollSoil (https://www.propollsoil.eu), NutriB2 (https://nutrib2.project.uj.edu.pl), and the Biodiversity Exploratories (https://www.biodiversity-exploratories.de/de/) projects MicroBEEs, MacroBEEs, AnthoDiv, and IntraFlor.

Selected publications

1. Keller, A. et al. 2023. Ten mostly simple rules to future proof trait data in ecological and evolutionary sciences. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14033

2. Keller, A. 2021. More than hitchhikers through the network: the shared microbiome of bees and flowers. Current Opinion in Insect Science 44: 8–15.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2020.09.007

3. Metz, T. et al. 2026. Biodiversity resilience in a tropical rainforest. Nature 652: 1232–1239. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10365-2

4. Holzmann, K. L. et al. 2026. Limited thermal tolerance in tropical insects and its genomic signature. Nature 651: 672–678. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10155-w

5. Quaresma, A. et al. 2026. Honey bee food resources under threat from climate change. Nature Communications 17: 1331. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68085-6