Within the context of REASSEMBLY, I study dung beetle trophic network reassembly across a forest recovery gradient in the Ecuadorian Chocó. Dung beetles are good predictors of habitat quality. First, because they are sensitive to environmental changes brought about by deforestation and because they depend upon medium- to large-bodied mammals …
The Ecuadorian Chocó forests are highly diverse and therefore have attracted the attention of many researchers, including those working on amphibians. However, new species may still be discovered as a new study shows, now published in the Joournal Salamandra by researchers from the Reassembly unit and their colleagues from the …
Niche differentiation is one of the key drivers of the biodiversity of coexisting species. Trees can provide very heterogeneous conditions from the bottom of the trunk to the upper twigs that can be used by a large variety of taxa. In two large Research Units, the lowland forest of Reassembly …
I realized I would study frogs only when I turned 20. During a field trip to the Ecuadorian rainforest, I heard the call of a frog perched on a branch over a river. After a long search, I finally spotted one of the most breathtaking creatures—a glass frog. Since then, …
Birds show a strong change in species composition when open vegetation grows back into a dense forest. And this change is matched by the species’ traits: seed-feeding species are replaced by fruit-feeding species, species with long wings and tails by those that have shorter ones. Many birds in open habitats …
Tenemos el placer de presentar el segundo boletín de Reassembly. Este año reflexionamos sobre nuestro segundo año de trabajo de campo, las pequeñas victorias en el trabajo, así como los nuevos amigos que conocimos en el camino. También presentamos con gran alegría nuestros primeros hallazgos sobre la recuperación del bosque. Les invitamos a …
Dead wood is an important habitat for a large diversity of forest insects and fungi and plays a relevant role in carbon pools and fluxes. Ana Falconí‑López and Nina Grella quantified the amount of woody debris in all sites along the chronosequence. Dead wood densities showed high variation across sites. …
Neotropical army ants are among the most specialized predators: each ant species is hunting on a narrowly selected number of ant species as their main prey, and some other arthropods are also included in their diet. Phil Hoenle and Chris von Beeren studied food webs between army ants and their …
How specialized are dung beetles for different dung types? A few years ago, dung beetle preferences were mostly studied with baited pitfall traps using easily available feces from livestock or zoo animals. Now we can unravel the “real” dung-beetle networks by looking into the beetles’ guts to identify DNA from …
As a biologist, I have always been interested in community ecology, and what is more incredible than ecology in the Tropics? So, I have spent the last years of my career working on understanding forest recovery after human disturbances, from the perspective of tree communities in the tropical forests of …
