Anna R. Landim and collaborators investigated the functional recovery of seed rain during natural forest regeneration and its underlying drivers. Specifically, they studied how local forest structure and landscape-scale connectivity shape the functional diversity and composition of seed rain driven by animal-mediated seed dispersal. Using plant–frugivore interaction networks combined with …
Each tree can offer various structures, attached plants or other microhabitats, summarized as tree-related microhabitats (TreMs). These TreMs represent important niches for animals or other organisms and thus play an important role for the biodiversity in a forest. The importance of multiple TreMs has been studied in temperate forests, but …
On a hot, sunny afternoon in the tropics, the buffering effect of forests becomes most evident: intact forests are several degrees cooler, and keeps the moisture in the soil and vegetation. Forests maintain much more favourable conditions not only for humans but for any living organism not adapted to heat …
Our recent article in Nature (see our Post here) may spark an optimistic viewpoint – animal communities in a tropical rainforest recover in a few decades, many of them even completely. Note that we only speak of a complete natural regeneration when, based on the species composition, a secondary forest …
How long does it take for a tropical rainforest ecosystem to recover on its own from deforestation? The answer to this apparently simple question required a huge effort achieved by our entire Research Unit and a complex analysis across over 10’000 plant and animal species and over 23’000 bacteria sequences …
Artificial “dummy” fruits are a very useful method to assess the recovery of potential interactions in restored forests. Most attacks on these dummy fruits are by birds (and some by arthropods or mammals), represented by fruit feeding bird species that are important seed dispersers. Pedro Luna and his team applied …
Trees in tropical rainforest generate a structurally very complex habitat, supporting many niches for a huge diversity of species. But how can this structural complexity be quantified? With a terrestrial laser scanner, Martin Ehbrecht and Tim Lehmann studied the three-dimensional vegetation structure along the chronosequence of ‘Reassembly’. In their recent …
In our study site, herpetologists of our Research Unit, led by Mark-Oliver Rödel’s group at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, discovered an individual of a Toad-Headed Pitviper Bothrocophias that was unknown to occur in the lowland Chocó rainforest in Ecuador. Not only its location, but also its taxonomic identity …
Der tropische Regenwald ist derzeit in aller Munde, dank der COP30 in Belem / Brasilien. In diesem Kontext spielt in den Medien auch die Studie eine Rolle, die Anna Landim, Matthias Schleuning und Kolleg:innen im Journal Current Biology publiziert haben zur Regeneration der wichtigen Funktion fruchtausbreitender Vögel (Link). Die Forschenden …
Die Uni Mainz hat eine sehr sehenswerte – von Studierenden initiierte – Vorlesungsreihe zur Klimakrise etabliert, die auch außerhalb der Uni sehr stark wahrgenommen wird (https://zukunft.uni-mainz.de/). Gestern (am 3. Nov. 2025) durfte ich dort vor hunderten Zuhörer:innen die Ergebnisse und Erkenntnisse der “Reassembly” Forschungsgruppe darstellen. Ich habe versucht, einen großen …
