Does our research contribute to restoring biodiversity and climate? There is an ongoing discussion around ‘natural solutions’ for climate, and the potential of forest restoration for carbon capture and mitigation of global warming. One of the key papers in this controversial debate was a Science paper in 2019 from Thomas …
[in German only] Als Geschäftsführer der Fundación Jocotoco berichtete Martin Schaefer über den Naturschutz in Ecuador – in der Vortragsreihe des Nationalparks Bayerischer Wald. Wie funktioniert effektiver Naturschutz in privaten Reservaten – Tieflandregenwald, Hochland und Galapagos? Welche Prioriäten gibt es, welche Probleme treten auf? Der sehr informative Vortrag gibt einen …
First exciting network results of our first Bachelor student in Reassembly, Jan Johann (in SP6). His analysis supports one of our key hypotheses: networks become more complex when forest recover, shown by an increase in the exponential Shannon diversity of links (eH2). Here, the trophic network is represented the distribution …
Our first analysis and paper on rainforest reassembly focuses on ants. During his PhD thesis, Phil Hoenle collected and identified a total of 283 ant species from litter, ground and tree trunks in 61 plots. The diversity was relatively high even in the agricultural sites, but ant community composition and …
While part of the team already disappeared in the djungle, some of us just had a first inspiring meeting across different subprojects on how to connect theory and empiry when it comes to mutualistic network assembly. Our theoreticists from SP1 kicked off the meeting with an input presentation about their …
Four snapshots from a wildlife camera campaign across our study plots performed by the Team Fabrikschleichach. A puma (Puma concolor), jaguar (Panthera onca), tayra (Eira barbara) and an ozelot (Leopardus pardalis) walked through the forest plots in November 2021.
Dung beetles are important secondary seed dispersers of mammal-dispersed plants in tropical forests – in our study site and worldwide. Beetles often bury the seeds that are included inside dung piles into the ground – if they are not too large in relation to the beetle. Beetles clean large seeds …
[in German only] Hessen-Schafft-Wissen hat kürzlich zwei Podcasts veröffentlicht – einen, in dem Nico Blüthgen über die Faszination und Relevanz von Regenwäldern spricht und das Projekt in Ecuador vorstellt (hier), und einen weiteren, in dem Nina Farwig den Zusammenhang zwischen Biodiversität und Ökosystemfunktionen erklärt (hier).
This 10-min video shows the hypotheses behind, and implementation of, the perturbation – recovery experiment.
