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 …
Acoustic monitoring is becoming increasingly important for evaluating the biodiversity and conservation value of sites across land use or regeneration scenarios. A team led by Jörg Müller and his lab at the University of Würzburg monitored bird sounds using recorders installed in 85 study plots in the Canandé region of …
For many animal species, we have a fairly good understanding of their ecological niche, including their main diets. For others we don’t – or we can only make assumptions based on related species. Therefore, observations of diets, feeding behavior and other natural history information are important. Niklas Fuchs, Eva Tamargo …
For Little-Devil Poison Frogs (Dendrobatidae: Oophaga sylvatica), researchers in Reassembly have now a case of parasitism for the first time: Myasis, a parasitic disease caused by fly larvae in living animal tissues. Myasis affects a variety of vertebrates worldwide, including humans, domestic animals and wildlife, but has been rarely reported …
REASSEMBLY’s first PhD thesis of the current phase. Timo’s successfully defended his thesis on “Assembly and stability of ecological communties and networks” on June 4th 2025 in the dapartment of Physics at the TU Darmstadt. His great oral defense required him drawing many equations on the black board. Congratulations!
Death-feigning (thanatosis) helps amphibians to avoid being eaten by predators. It has been documented for white-lipped frogs of the genus Leptodactylus among other frogs. Niklas Fuchs, Markus Schönleitner and Mark Oliver Rödel now documented this behavior for the first time for the red-thighed thin-toed frog Leptodactylus rhodomerus, published as a …
Biodiversity metrics are affected by variation in sampling completeness, and notoriously underestimate the species’ diversity in a site. Recently, statistical tools have been developed to estimate and account for biases in sample coverage. These tools allow researchers to compare observed and expected diversity metrics and their change along gradients. This …
“A story of hope and opportunity…”. The non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform MONGABAY published an article on our research findings in the project Reassembly. Journalist Ruth Kamnitzer interviewed us and wrote the following article – worth reading:
