โWhat is a species?โ is a fundamental question in biology influencing many aspects of integrated biodiversity research. The biological species concept, long considered as the golden standard, defines species as reproductively isolated populations in which there is no gene flow and whose genomes diverge due to selection and genetic drift. However, species constantly interact through gene flow,...
Urban intensification has resulted in an intensive and often uncontrolled increase in artificial and sealed surfaces, reducing exposure to green space and the associated health-enhancing factors. According to the EEA, between 2012 and 2018, the area of newly sealed soil of the EU-27 and the UK increased by 1,467 km2 (European Environment Agency, 2022). This extensive sealing of soil raises not...
iDivโs Media and Communications unit wants to support iDiv researchers in writing outreach into their proposals. Most third-party funders offer the option to include outreach subprojects in grant proposals. For instance, I (Volker) have reviewed outreach subprojects within CRC proposals for the DFG.
Aim of this poster presentation is to network with iDiv researchers interested in writing...
Biodiversity data can be messy, scattered and hard to come by - especially in Germany. As the national research data infrastructure for biodiversity (NFDI4Biodiversity) we set out to make biodiversity data FAIR and open. One of our products is the "Lebendiger Atlas der Natur Deutschlands (LAND)", a national biodiversity portal that provides species occurrence data in Germany to researchers,...
By offering various benefits, natural amenities play a significant role in enhancing the well-being of urban citizens whose city life is often associated with hecticness and stress. Urban green spaces serve citizens with recreational opportunities, aesthetic enjoyment, contribute to public health, climate regulations, cooling effect, and have an impact on the attractiveness of neighborhoods...
Angiosperms (flowering plants), with over 350k species, represent one of the most spectacular and enigmatic evolutionary radiations on earth. A potential explanation for this evolutionary success may be found in the unique functional traits (i.e. โkey-innovationsโ) of angiosperms that presumably allowed them to colonise and compete in novel environments, establish new biotic interactions, and...
Remote sensing is frequently used to assess biodiversity, particularly species and functional diversity. Common approaches rely on the spectral diversity of plant canopies. Spectral diversity, however, exhibits temporal dynamics that remain inadequately understood. We investigated these dynamics in a nutrient-rich floodplain meadow in northern Germany, characterized by dense grassland...
Background: Noncommunicable diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD), account for a large proportion of the global burden of disease. Certain characteristics of biodiverse green spaces such as walkability have been argued to enhance physical health outcomes such as cardiovascular health by increasing the likelihood and intensity of physical activity (PA). However, existing...
Seeds host highly diverse microbial communities, which colonize the surface but also the internal tissues of the seeds (i.e., seed epiphytes and endophytes). For decades, seed endophytes have gone unnoticed, but recent studies indicate that these microorganisms can have a major influence on the development and health of seedlings. Most of these endophytes seem to be plant-beneficial bacteria...
Biodiversity change research is highly relevant given the increasing impact of human activities transforming the planet and causing significant shifts in Earth's biosphere. Several large-scale data compilations, such as BioTIME, GBIF, and the Living Planet Index, have been created to quantify multiscale changes in biodiversity and understand how humans may drive the underlying dynamics of the...
Arthropods comprise 75% of the earthโs living organisms. At the same time, only 10% of all conservation actions target arthropods โ a mismatch that poses a significant threat to global biodiversity. Increasing urbanization in the world reduces nature experiences for city dwellers, effectively alienating people from nature. Urban environments provide few habitats for most insect species. The...
Ecosystem functions are influenced by various factors. While the role of biodiversity role in maintaining ecosystem functioning is widely acknowledged, there is a significant knowledge gap regarding belowground plant traits. Historically, trait-based concepts have focused mainly on aboveground traits, creating a bias and a lack of understanding of belowground traits. The recent introduction of...
The potential of contact with nature as a health intervention has gained significant momentum. However, the credibility of supporting evidence is contingent upon the quality of study designs, which differ in their biases and capacity to accurately assess the true effect of nature exposure on health outcomes. In this study, we empirically assessed the prevalence of various study designs used to...
Plant regeneration plays a crucial role for the persistence and stability of plant populations and species diversity. Grasslands are mostly dominated by perennial, herbaceous species. These species can follow different life- histories. Perennial, herbaceous species mostly reproduce by sexually produced seeds, which often is complemented by clonal reproduction
In managed grasslands, plants...
As recent studies suggest, soil moisture seems to be positively affected by plant diversity. Since soil moisture is an essential part of an ecosystem's microclimate, driving plant and microbial interactions, this effect is likely an important mechanism that drives the diversity-ecosystem stability relationship. However, complicated interactions between soil moisture, soil temperature, and...
Terrestrial biodiversity drives ecosystem functions that regulate land-atmosphere interactions. Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning (BEF) relationships are critical for ecosystem stability and resilience. While current BEF knowledge stems from relatively small-scale experiments, in-situ data, and theoretical work, Earth Observation (EO) data offer ample opportunities for global vegetation...
Freshwater streams are affected by pesticide and nutrient inputs and severe alterations of the natural water course and riparian vegetation. The goal of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) to achieve a โgood ecological statusโ for all surface waters by 2015 has been missed in a large part of German rivers and streams.
In the BMBF-funded citizen science project FLOW, over 900...
Mongolia, like everywhere else in the world, is currently confronted by the effects of global change. These predominately include increasing average winter temperatures, decrease in winter and spring precipitation and a change in land-use due to increased grazing pressure. Little is yet known about the long-term effects of these developments on plant phenology, species composition and plant...
Orthopterans, encompassing crickets, bush-crickets, and grasshoppers, are key invertebrate herbivores notable for their genome size (GS) variation and reproductive diversity (RD). Over evolutionary timescales, orthopterans show large-scale chromosome rearrangements. The persistence chromosomal polymorphisms, such as B chromosomes and sex chromosomes in certain lineages but not others, warrants...
Citizen science (CS) has great potential to advance ecological stream monitoring and restoration. In our scoping study, we aim to investigate how existing CS stream monitoring approaches can best be used and adapted to monitor and implement stream restoration projects together with engaged citizens as a part of inclusive governance.
Effective freshwater monitoring and restoration requires not...
The temperature increase predicted for the end of the 21st century will affect the distribution of biodiversity worldwide and impact natural resources and the availability of ecosystem services. Given the dependence of humans on certain species and the severity of environmental change, the effects may vary from region to region. The availability of timber is directly linked to the natural...
to the biodiversity and climate crises, robust monitoring of biodiversity has been lacking due to the inaccessibility and heterogeneous formats of valuable data and observations, as well as suitable analysis methods.
The goal of this study is, therefore, to integrate the entire repertoire of available geo- and citizen science data to link previously untapped biodiversity information with...
Imagine a world where young minds, regardless of their native language, can delve into the hidden wonders beneath their feet. Our mission is to make science accessible to everyone by breaking down language barriers and fostering inclusivity in science education. By sharing soil biodiversity knowledge in various languages, we are helping to bridge cultural gaps and raise environmental...
Heterotrophic protists occupy key nodes in terrestrial food webs due to their high abundance, fast turnover and functional importance as microbial grazers. However, their impact on groundwater bacterial communities and organic carbon transfer to higher trophic levels remains largely unknown. Assessing their role in trophic interactions using molecular techniques has been limited by the...
Global biodiversity loss threatens a multitude of ecosystem functions. However, not only the diversity of communities drives their functioning, but also the identity and abundance of their members. While arthropods are key indicators of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning declines โ e.g. the transfer of energy; often studied through their biomass โ it remains unexplored whether such...
Host innate immunity and social interactions among hosts can act in concert to influence the spread of their parasites. Clonal raider ants (Ooceraea biroi) raid the nests of other ant species and are therefore potentially prone to spillover of their preyโs pathogens, the impact of which is expected to be further exacerbated by the antsโ social lifestyle and lack of genetic diversity. Recent...
The elemental composition of plants plays a major role in different ecosystem processes (e.g. nutrient recycling) and ecological interactions (e.g. herbivory), and has of recent received increased attention in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research. While biodiversity can affect plant community nutrient responses, less is known about the role of biodiversity on the stability of these...
In soil microbiomes, the interplay between dispersal, biotic, and abiotic selection is scale-dependent, but the impact of sampling design on biodiversity estimates is often overlooked. To address this, we studied the effects of spatial sampling designs, including commonly-practiced homogenization (or sample pooling), on microbial diversity estimates by sampling soil microbiomes at 54 sites...
Preserving farmland biodiversity is one of the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union.
To achieve this goal, it is important to restore landscape connectivity by enriching agricultural landscapes again with accessible habitats for breeding, feeding, and shelter. In intensive agricultural regions of Germany, adding more hedges would be highly beneficial for...
Human induced climate change poses a threat to global biodiversity. Broad scale effects of climate change are often assessed on the basis of long-term changes in climatic conditions. However, the effect of increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (EWE) due to climate change on biodiversity remains unclear. We introduce a general framework to investigate the effects of EWE...
Given that food and shelter are basic human needs, it is not surprising that much scientific focus goes into understanding and modelling plant production systems for nutrition and industrial needs. It is crucial to understand where and when specific crops are most suitable to grow now and in the (near-term) future under risk scenarios.
Agricultural land suitability assessment models are...
Animals move in order to track resources and suitable habitats for their survival. In turn, animal movement promotes ecosystem stability and its functions, generating large scale biodiversity patterns. Animals, and all of us, make decisions on where to go and how to get there, evaluating the optimal travel paths more or less sub-consciously. Perhaps the most clear factor influencing movement...
Preliminary abstract: "There is substantial variation in investments in renewable energy infrastructure across European countries. This paper examines country-level variables to explain differences in the willingness to accept investments in renewable energy plants. Using survey data and a discrete choice experiment encompassing 13,879 observations from 30 European countries, we analyze...
Quantitative evidence synthesis aims for general insights into the direction, magnitude and variability of ecological effects. Two common forms of quantitative synthesis are meta-analysis (i.e., analyses of effect sizes collated or calculated from existing studies), and analyses of data compiled to address specific questions. Both approaches frequently quantify the heterogeneity of effect...
The European Union has set an ambitious target to tackle climate change: achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. To achieve this target, it is essential that the EU focuses on increasing carbon storage in our soils and forests. According to most experts, the implementation of nature-based solutions (NbS) is crucial to tackling the climate crisis. Rewilding is a type of NbS that aims to...
Interactions of human societies with the climate system and ecosystems in the biosphere caused the twin-crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. In this paper we contribute to addressing the challenge of evaluating socially optimal climate policy in a world with atmosphere-biosphere interactions by combining the work of two influential economists: Partha Dasgupta and Bill Nordhaus....
Soil, Earth's vital thin skin, sustains life beyond water and forms the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems. Our project โSoil Multistabilityโ aims to deepen our understanding of soil stability and its crucial role in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF). Specifically, we focus on multidimensional soil stability, including temporal stability, resistance, and recovery, by examining the...
Agricultural land abandonment is one of the main drivers of land-use change across Europe, with significant environmental consequences, particularly in regions such as northern Portugal. In the Peneda-Gerรชs National Park, this phenomenon has led to substantial landscape changes, primarily through secondary natural succession on areas formerly used for agriculture. As a result, the National...
There is growing evidence of a worldwide insect decline, caused by various pressures such as natural habitat loss, chemicals, or warming temperatures. However, not all insects are impacted in the same way, and long-term monitoring coupled with a trait approach can be a powerful tool for understanding the drivers and consequences of these environmental changes. Here, we use data from two...
Reversing the decline of biodiversity requires that scientists work with society to achieve comprehensive and efficient conservation of habitats and species. Scientists can contribute in many ways, e.g. by informing on current and new policies and aiding their implementation through expert advice, development of definitions, indices and standards, or evaluations of current status.
The...
Soil food-webs are crucial for nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning in forests. They involve complex interactions between soil invertebrates, fungi and microbes, and are based on a variety of resources. Forest ecosystems dominated by distinct mycorrhizal associations exhibit significant differences in their biogeochemical properties on a global scale. A critical distinction lies in...
The academic culture is often characterized by hyper-competitive pressures and steep hierarchies, which can drive inappropriate possessiveness over research topics and resources - a phenomenon termed the "Gollum effect." While anecdotal accounts suggest this is common, its true prevalence and impact remain unknown. This study presents the first large-scale, empirical investigation of the...
Winter climate change threatens the subnivium (i.e., the microhabitat that exists between the snowpack and the ground), and the community of species that depends on it for overwintering survival. One group of species that will likely exhibit an array of responses to subnivium loss are overwintering insects because they vary in their cold tolerance strategies and lower thermal limits. For an...
Global change is altering above-belowground multitrophic communities, and this has consequences for ecosystem processes and multifunctionality. The ecosystem-wide effects of such changes depend on the joint interplay of various taxa and their ecological interactions. Our aim is to investigate how above-belowground multifunctionality, multitrophic interaction networks, and energy fluxes respond...
Women and several minority groups are underrepresented in leadership positions in scientific institutions. How does iDiv compare to the global picture? In general, female researchers face both structural and individual challenges, including lower income, fewer career development opportunities, unconscious biases, discrimination, and harassment. The first step to changing this reality is to...
Litterfall has a key role in biomass and nutrient recycling by linking aboveground production and soil processes. These ecosystem processes are modulated by tree species richness and associated mycorrhizal fungi (arbuscular mycorrhiza AM vs. ectomycorrhiza EM). Tree biomass production, for instance, increases with increasing tree species richness and mixed mycorrhizal associations. Yet, the...
Landscape alteration, agricultural intensification and climate change are considered the most important global change factors driving wild bee decline. However, little is known about whether these drivers have led to changes in the life-history traits of bees. Body size is one of the most fundamental life-history traits, with pervasive effects on individual fitness, population dynamics and the...
Fleshy fruits are classified into two groups based on their ripening: climacteric and non-climacteric. Climacteric fruits increase respiration and ethylene production with ripening, reaching maturation even after release from the parent plant. Non-climacteric show neither and maturation can only occur while still attached. In the natural environment, the evolution and function of these traits...
Urbanisation is one of the main drivers of land-use change with overall negative effects on biodiversity. Yet, insect pollinator communities have been shown to have contrasting responses to urbanisation with varying effects on their species richness and abundance. Here, we used a multiple spatial scale (local to landscape scale) within-city approach to investigate the overall impact of urban...
Nematodes are abundant and diverse in soil, and they can influence microbial community composition, plant performance, and nutrient cycling, serving as vital bioindicators for soil ecology and health. While metabarcoding techniques have become highly standardized in the identification of microbial (i.e., bacterial and fungal) communities, similar techniques are still under development for soil...
The reproduction of most crops and wild plant species depends on interactions with animal pollinators, which are declining globally due to climate change and human activities. Understanding changes in pollinator populations and plant-pollinator interactions is crucial for predicting and mitigating biodiversity loss. Traditional methods for collecting these data are time-consuming, costly, and...
Climate change forecasts predict an increasing frequency of consecutive drought years, likely negatively impacting tree growth in Central European forests. Although mixing tree species has been found to enhance the temporal stability of growth in tree communities, studies show inconsistent results regarding extreme drought events. Recent research indicates that, aside from climatic conditions,...
Manual microscopic analyses are traditionally the gold standard for various palynological applications. However, the recent trend is towards automated, database-driven pollen analyses that are expected to be cheaper, less time-consuming and allow better reproducibility than traditional microscope-based methods. One such innovative approach is multispectral imaging flow cytometry combined with...
Metabarcoding is a versatile, powerful and widely used tool for the identification of taxonomic entities, uncovering hidden diversity, assessing of community composition in space and time, elucidating species interactions and food webs, and monitoring biodiversity changes. Metabarcoding allows the monitoring of biodiversity over the whole taxonomic range - bacteria, protists, fungi, animals,...
Relationships between plant functional traits and environmental variables are important to understand the reasons underlying patterns of vegetation characteristics and quantify potential changes due to climate change. However, plant functional traits have been predicted from environmental data only with moderate success and the reasons for this remain partly unclear.
Here, we test the...
Bees vary greatly in their dietary span, ranging from highly specialized species that collect floral rewards (e.g., pollen, nectar, or oil) from very few plant taxa to generalists that utilize a variety of floral hosts. Such diet specialization is hypothesized to constrain both the abundance and distribution of a species, with specialist species having lower abundance and smaller distribution...
The TRY initiative (https://www.try-db.org) was established in 2007 at the request of IGBP and DIVERSITAS to develop a joint database of in-situ measured plant traits to support vegetation modelling and biodiversity research. Established at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, the TRY database has achieved unprecedented coverage. Since 2015, data have been publicly available,...
Genetic diversity is an important level of biodiversity whose protection is essential in the face
of climate change. It is therefore necessary to understand how genetic diversity can be most
effectively protected and what causes it. The aim of this study is to determine which of the 23
anthropogenic and environmental variables has the greatest influence on the genetic diversity
of...
Groundwater-dependent vegetation (GDV) forms globally important biodiversity hotspots, which are threatened by climate and land-use change and require large-scale mapping efforts for their protection. Phreatophyte species are relevant local ecohydrological indicators of groundwater. However, there exists no approach to move from species to plot level to the final large-scale mapping of GDV. A...
Contemporary evolution is a common occurrence where plant species colonize non-native ranges and encounter novel interaction partners. However, our understanding of contemporary evolution is limited because most native vs. non-native range comparisons overlook within-range variation among populations and lack interdisciplinary frameworks utilizing multi-omics approaches. The integrative...
Recent recurrent drought years have imposed water and heat stress on trees across Germany. However, it is unclear how demographic rates of broadleaved tree species were affected by the drought. Moreover, it is likely that climate change leads to an increasing frequency of drought years and associated changes of demographic rates, and it is unclear whether current forests will still be viable...
Our understanding of the intricate relationships between trees and their holobiont partners in the soil community is significantly expanding. However, the impact of trophic interactions on these biotic drivers is rarely explored. In particular, nematodes represent a wide range of trophic groups in the soil community, including plant parasites, bacterial and fungal feeders, predators and...
Intraspecific phytochemical diversity (โchemodiversityโ) affects plant-environment interactions. However, the ecological mechanisms maintaining chemodiversity remain largely unknown. Here, the effects of steroidal glycoside (SG) chemodiversity and chemotype on plant performance, seed progeny, herbivory and buzz-pollination were assessed. Plot-level SG chemodiversity was manipulated using a...
Plant functional diversity is a crucial property for ecosystem dynamics and buffering extreme events. Metrics for plant functional diversity are usually computed using a set of plant functional traits and corresponding species. Due to the scarcity of field data, functional diversity estimates are frequently only available for single points in time.
However, seasonal dynamics during the...
Our forests are challenged by a suite of stressors associated with climate change, such as extended droughts, heatwaves, โfalse springsโ increasing late-frost risk, storms, heavy rainfall events, and novel pathogens. Our iDiv platform ARBOfun, established in 2012 in Groรpรถsna, was designed to study the responses (e.g., resistance, resilience) to these stressors of individual trees of close to...
sPlot (v4.0) is the most comprehensive vegetation database in the world containing more than 2.5 million plot observations and 53 million species x observation records from 138 countries. To reduce the geographical distribution bias of the previous versions towards the Global North, we actively worked to promote the integration of researchers from underrepresented areas in this new release....
Eco-metabolomics is an emerging interdisciplinary field that combines ecological and metabolomic methodologies to investigate the biochemical basis of ecological processes and their responses to environmental changes. By examining how environmental factors such as climate, soil conditions, and interspecies interactions influence the metabolic profiles of organisms, eco-metabolomics provides...
Grasslands cover 20-40% of Earthโs land and provide important ecosystem functions. While grassland productivity matters for fodder or bioenergy supply, biodiversity is also relevant, e.g. for stability and for support of animal species, such as pollinators. Hence, the relations between these functions, and their responses to climate and land use change, need to be well understood to promote...
Symbionts are integral to arthropod biology, profoundly shaping their hosts' phenotypic traits and playing a pivotal role in speciation. While these associations can be costly for insect hosts, they are typically stable and maternally transmitted with high fidelity. However, the absence of co-cladogenesis suggests that many symbiont-host relationships are transient over evolutionary...
Habitat destruction is an important consequence of land use change and is considered to be one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss globally. One of the complications in predicting biodiversity response to habitat loss is the fact that species responses are not instantaneous, creating a time lag to extinctions, what has been termed โextinction-debtโ. It has been noted empirically that...
Genetic diversity is a fundamental component of biodiversity that contributes to the capacity of populations to cope with environmental change. Understanding the extent to which population genetic processes are consistently associated with environmental factors across species is a powerful way to examine the processes maintaining patterns of biodiversity. The field of macrogenetics addresses...
Abstract:
Urbanization and agricultural practices account for some of the most drastic modifications to natural habitats as a result of anthropogenic land cover change. The relative importance of different land covers for shaping insect communities, however, remains unclear.
In this study, we combine large spatial scale sampling by using citizen scientists car net data collection (nets...
In Asia, previous studies have shown changes across the EoceneโOligocene Transition (EOT, a global cooling event; 34 Ma) from perissodactyl-dominated faunas to those dominated by smaller-bodied Glires, better adapted to dry environments with limited resources (the Mongolian Remodelling). However, recent paleoenvironmental records and novel climate models show drying already occurring in...
Fleshy fruits have evolved to attract seed-dispersing animals to ingest the seed and disperse it away from the mother tree. Fleshy fruits evolved independently multiple times across all major angiosperm families and dispersal by frugivorous animals is the major dispersal strategy of a majority of woody flowering plants, particularly in tropical religions. These fruits interact with a diverse...
The first biodiversity and ecosystem services scenario based model intercomparision found limitations with existing scenarios and models. Existing scenarios such as SSPs/RCPs do not explore all the policy options for positive environmental futures. In addition, large uncertainties exist in modelling the combined impacts of land-use and climate change. Here we will present a new model...
Information transmission among species is ubiquitous in natural ecosystems. Individuals receive sensory inputs and convert them into information by perceiving and analyzing cues in their surroundings. This inter-species information exchange and utilization is known as โinformation flowโ, and regulates different kinds of species interactions, such as foraging and mating. However, with increased...
Ever-growing human population and nutritional demands, supply chain disruptions, and advancing climate change have led to the realization that changes in diversity and system performance are intimately linked. Moreover, diversity and system performance depend on heterogeneity. Mitigating changes in system performance and promoting sustainable living conditions requires transformative...
Rewilding is an emerging paradigm in restoration science, and is increasingly gaining popularity as a cost-effective ecosystem restoration option. However, there has been limited study of the socio-political dimensions of rewilding projects, particularly how political affiliation may influence preferences for rewilding. Given the dynamic European political landscape, and significant new...
