Flux.Com

Understanding species assemblage mechanisms and the processes that affect their distribution, abundance, and interactions between populations is a scientific challenge in community ecology. Understanding the relationship between pathogens and their antagonists is also a major issue in the current agricultural context of reduced inputs and ecosystem services optimisation.

Ecological transition zones between ecosystems are areas of abrupt change in vegetation that play a major role in ecological processes and population dynamics on a landscape scale. The Flux.Com project aims to understand the distribution patterns of the vineyard and forest ecosystem communities and species dispersal mechanisms. The objective is to characterise biological fluxes between ecosystems and study the functional consequences of these exchanges. By combining three approaches (descriptive, functional, and mechanical), we will test the hypothesis of the reservoir role played by the forest ecosystem for the vineyard agro-ecosystem and evaluate how the natural control service of pests and diseases in viticulture decreases in proportion to the distance to the ecotone.

Communities studied (phyllosphere microbial communities and arthropod communities) will be characterised in several transects of vineyard-deciduous forest using meta-genotaxonomy methods (for bacteria and fungi) and morphological identification (arthropods). The control service will be evaluated in the same points using sentinel prey and plants. Passive dispersion of micro-organisms emitted by a "source" forest plot and deposited on a “receptor” vine plot will be modelled using a three-dimensional air flow simulation tool which will help evaluate emission flow in particular.