A5075339757- Plant and animal studies
- Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Isotope Analysis in Ecology
- Physiological and biochemical adaptations
- Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior
- Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies
- Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies
- Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Marine and Offshore Engineering Studies
- Insects and Parasite Interactions
- GABA and Rice Research
- Advanced X-ray Imaging Techniques
- Weed Control and Herbicide Applications
- Botany and Plant Ecology Studies
- Microbial bioremediation and biosurfactants
- Coffee research and impacts
- Fish Ecology and Management Studies
- Advanced X-ray and CT Imaging
- Sustainability and Ecological Systems Analysis
- Plant Parasitism and Resistance
- Insect Utilization and Effects
- Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Insect and Pesticide Research
Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change
2024-2025
Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig
2020-2022
University of Münster
2017-2020
University of Göttingen
2014-2017
Institute of Zoology
2011-2015
Recently, the importance of body mass and allometric scaling for structure dynamics ecological networks has been highlighted in several ground‐breaking studies. However, advances understanding generalities across ecosystem types are impeded to a considerable extent by methodological dichotomy contrasting portion marine ecology on one hand opposite traditional community other hand. Many ecologists bound taxonomy‐neglecting size spectrum approach when describing analysing patterns. In...
Predicting ecosystem functioning at large spatial scales rests on our ability to scale up from local plots landscapes, but this is highly contingent understanding of how varies through space. Such an has been hampered by a strong experimental focus biodiversity-ecosystem research restricted small scales. To address limitation, we investigate the drivers variation in multitrophic energy flux-a measure complex communities-at landscape scale. We use structural equation modelling framework based...
Macrofauna invertebrates of forest floors provide important functions in the decomposition process soil organic matter, which is affected by nutrient stoichiometry leaf litter. Climate change effects on ecosystems include warming and decreasing litter quality (e.g. higher C : ratios) induced atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. While litter-bag experiments unravelled separate effects, a mechanistic understanding how interactions between temperature are driving rates lacking. In laboratory...
To maintain constant chemical composition, i.e. elemental homeostasis, organisms have to consume resources of sufficient quality meet their own specific stoichiometric demand. Therefore, concentrations elements indicate resource quality, and rare in the environment may act as limiting factors for individual scaling up constrain population densities. We investigated how biomass densities invertebrate populations temperate forest soil communities depend on 1) stoichiometry basal litter...
Living organisms are constrained by both resource quantity and quality. Ecological stoichiometry offers important insights into how the elemental composition of resources affects their consumers. If quality decreases, consumers can respond shifting body stoichiometry, avoiding low-quality resources, or up-regulating feeding rates to maintain supply required elements while excreting excess carbon (i.e., compensatory feeding). We analyzed multitrophic consumer biomass, along a resource-quality...
Nutrition is the single most important factor for individual's growth and reproduction. Consequently, inability to reach nutritional optimum imposes severe consequences animal fitness. Yet, under natural conditions, organisms may face a mixture of stressors that can modulate effects asymmetry. For instance, stressful environments caused by intense interaction with conspecifics. Here, we subjected house cricket Acheta domesticus (i) either two types diet have proved affect performance (ii)...
Abstract Forest soil and litter is inhabited by a diverse community of animals, which directly indirectly rely on dead organic matter as habitat food resource. However, composition may be driven biotic or abiotic forces, these vary with changes in structure resource supply associated forest land use. To evaluate changes, we compiled comprehensive data the species animal communities environmental factors types varying land-use intensity each three regions Germany, i.e., coniferous, young...
Abstract The ratio of predator-to-prey biomass is a key element trophic structure that typically investigated from food chain perspective, ignoring channels energy transfer (e.g. omnivory) may govern community structure. Here, we address this shortcoming by characterising the 141 freshwater, marine and terrestrial webs, spanning broad gradient in biomass. We test whether sub-linear scaling between predator prey (a potential signal density-dependent processes) emerges within ecosystem types...
Abstract Understanding insect behaviour and its underlying drivers is vital for interpreting changes in local biodiversity predicting future trends. Conventional traps are typically limited to assess the composition of communities over longer time periods provide only insights into effects abiotic factors, such as light on species activity. Achieving finer temporal resolution labour‐intensive or possible under laboratory conditions. Here, we demonstrate that time‐controlled sampling using an...
Ecological communities consist of small abundant and large non‐abundant species. The energetic equivalence rule is an often‐observed pattern that could be explained by equal energy usage among organisms organisms. To generate this pattern, metabolism (as indicator individual use) abundance have to scale inversely with body mass, cancel each other out. In contrast, the referred as biomass states all species in area should constant across body‐mass range. study, we investigated forest soil...
Abstract The selection of plant provenance for ecological restoration is an intensively debated topic. Throughout this debate, arguments mostly focus on performance, but little attention paid to the effects other members restored ecosystem. On hand, in projects that specifically supporting interacting biota, example, wildflower strips among fields support pollinators, choice often not considered, partly because effect pollinators unknown. In pioneering case study, we tested whether...
Abstract While metabolic theory predicts variance in population density within communities depending on average body masses, the ecological stoichiometry concept relates variation across to varying resource stoichiometry. Using a data set including biomass densities of 4959 populations soil invertebrates 48 forest sites we combined these two frameworks. We analyzed how scaling with population‐averaged masses systematically interacts stoichiometric variables. Simplified analyses employing...
Abstract High biodiversity and biomass of soil communities are crucial for litter decomposition in terrestrial ecosystems such as tropical forests. However, the leaf that these consume is particularly poor quality indicated by elemental stoichiometry. The impact resource quantity, other habitat parameters on species richness consumer often studied isolation, although much can be learned from simultaneously studying both community characteristics. Using a dataset 780 macro‐invertebrate across...
Agricultural landscapes are globally dominated by monocultures under intensive management. This is one of the main reasons for biodiversity loss and insect population decline in many regions all over world. Agroecosystem these areas can be enhanced cropping system diversification, such as crop rotations. Yet, long-term studies on effects rotations aboveground agrobiodiversity lacking. We set up a 10-year rotation experiment Central Germany monitored temporal dynamics arthropods full...
Widespread application of synthetic pesticides and loss plant diversity are regarded as significant drivers current global change. The effects such phenomena on insect performance have been extensively studied separately, yet the interactions these two poorly explored. Here, we subjected polyphagous grasshopper Pseudochorthippus parallelus (Zetterstedt, 1821) to a full-lifecycle field experiment with 50 cages containing experimental communities differing in grass species richness (2 vs. 8...
Abstract Movement performance of insects is an important measure physiological fitness and likely affected by novel stressors associated with global change. Reduced can lead to smaller foraging areas thus decreasing abundance, diversity nutritional quality, which could weaken insect populations contribute decline. Here, we combined two different methods: An experimental semi‐field design applying treatments in outdoor flight cages a follow‐up experiment conducted the laboratory, parameters...
Ecologists have long debated the universality of energetic equivalence rule (EER), which posits that population energy use should be invariant with average body size due to negative size–density scaling. We explored and size–energy scaling across 183 geographically–distributed soil invertebrate food webs investigate these fundamental EER assumptions. Additionally, we compared two measures relationships: metabolism fluxes. found did not support in communities. Furthermore, evidence was...
In ecological research, a key interest is to explore movement patterns of individual organisms across different spatial scales as one driver biotic interactions. While various methods exist detect and record the presence movements individuals in combination with UAS, addressing these for smaller animals, such insects, challenging often fails reveal information on potential Here, we address this gap by combining UAS-based detection small tracers fluorescent dyes means simple experiment under...
Abstract The selection of plant provenance for ecological restoration is an intensively debated topic. Throughout this debate, arguments mostly focus on performance, but little attention paid to the effects other members restored ecosystem. On hand, in projects that specifically supporting interacting biota, example flower stripes among fields support pollinators, choice often not considered, partly because effect pollinators unknown. In pioneering case study, we tested whether differentiate...