Conveners
Biodiversity and the functioning of Ecosystems
- Henriette Christel (iDiv)
- Rike Schwarz (University Leipzig)
- Robert Rauschkolb
Biodiversity and the functioning of Ecosystems
- Henriette Christel (iDiv)
- Rike Schwarz (University Leipzig)
- Robert Rauschkolb
Biodiversity and the functioning of Ecosystems
- Robert Rauschkolb
- Henriette Christel (iDiv)
- Rike Schwarz (University Leipzig)
Forests dominated by arbuscular- (AMF) and ectomycorrhiza (EMF) differ in their carbon stocks and processes. However, differences in structure and function of higher trophic levels in these forests are largely unexplored. Here I summarise the results of our Emmy Noether project, testing hypothesis that the structure and trophic functions of soil food webs differ between AMF and EMF temperate...
Soil food webs, driven by complex interactions among plants, microbes and invertebrates, are crucial for carbon and nutrient cycling in forest ecosystems. Over the last decade it has become evident that forests dominated by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) or ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) differ in their litter chemistry and microbial community composition, leading to different carbon and...
Production forests are typically managed to optimize timber production, resulting in even-aged stands with few canopy gaps and little deadwood until the final harvest. This biotic homogenization can reduce biodiversity, with far-reaching consequences for ecosystem functioning and human well-being. To explore strategies that promote biodiversity while maintaining timber production, the BETA-FOR...
Microbial growth, carbon use efficiency (CUE), and functions are central to biomass accumulation and contribute to organic carbon formation through the persistent microbial residues. However, at the macroscale, mechanistic understanding remains limited regarding how microbial community diversity, assembly, functions, and physiological traits interact to influence microbial contributions to SOC...
Prophages are integrated forms of phages (i.e. viruses that infect bacteria) within bacterial genomes. Beyond their role in horizontal gene transfer, prophages can carry genes that influence host metabolism and community function. They can be maintained in the host genome over generations, but they can also shift into a lytic cycle under environmental stress. This transition results in host...
The phyllosphere comprises the tissues and the surface of plant leaves and their microbiomes. Despite its ecological significance, the factors shaping foliar endophyte communities and their interactions with trees and shrubs remain largely unexplored. Here we use the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research platform BEF-China, where trees were planted in a broken-stick design along a...
Data collection, management, and reuse are increasingly important in the life sciences. In microbial ecology, sequencing has altered our relationship to the invisible microbial world and created massive amounts of reusable microbiome data, but these data are hard to integrate and underused. To foster sequence data reuse, we created the Microbial Community Database (MiCoDa), an open database of...
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of droughts, leading to widespread tree mortality and growth reductions in forests. Yet, it remains unclear how different tree species regulate water loss under changing environmental conditions. Stomatal conductance (gs), which quantifies the ease with which gases diffuse through stomatal pores of leaves, plays a crucial role in...
Viruses are exceedingly numerous and diverse biological objects. Though for a long time viruses have been studied in terms of their medical and economic importance, now interest to their ecological role in terrestrial ecosystems is growing.
Currently, the main areas of research on viruses in terrestrial ecosystems include
- viruses of medical, veterinary, and agricultural importance causing...
Phenological events in plants are shifting worldwide due to climate change. By studying long-term shifts of phenological events in plants using historical data records, scientists gain a deeper understanding of potential further changes. However, conducting such Time-for-Time Substitutions (TFTS) remains sparse due to limited availability of long-term data. An alternative method is the...
Partitioning biomass and functions such as effective separation between leaf (green part) from floral part of plant communities allows a more accurate estimation of photosynthetic vs. reproductive investment. Particularly facing the rise in global temperatures due to climate change, plant communities alter their metabolism, growth, and gas exchange, ultimately affecting functional traits....
The dispersal potential of pollen influences gene flow within and between plant populations impacting on processes such as local adaptation, speciation and long-term survival of metapopulations. However, our knowledge on physiological trade-offs (e.g. pollen size, pollen density, vegetative resources, etc.) that impact pollen dispersal are yet limited, since conventional dispersal...
LiDAR-based forest monitoring provides a powerful means of capturing tree structure at high spatial resolution, yet quantitative morphometric analyses of individual tree shapes remain underexplored. Using a published LiDAR dataset covering forest plots in Southern Germany, we extracted 200 annotated point cloud renderings of individual trees from eight species, segmented with a...
Gross Primary Production (GPP), the gross uptake of CO2 by vegetation, represents the largest carbon flux in terrestrial ecosystems and is fundamental to understanding global carbon dynamics. While Eddy Covariance (EC) towers provide direct, high-frequency estimates of GPP, their global spatial coverage remains limited. When there is an absence of EC data, remote sensing (RS) techniques are...
Insect outbreaks significantly affect forest composition, carbon and nutrient cycling, and water and energy fluxes. Functional diversity within forest communities may mitigate insect disturbance impacts by reducing host tree dominance and constraining insect population growth.
To investigate biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships under insect pressure, we conducted a series...
The Caatinga, a seasonally dry tropical forest in northeastern Brazil, remains one of the most understudied biomes in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. To address this gap, the BrazilDry Experiment was established to explore how tree species richness, functional composition, and facilitation influence microclimate and contribute to ecosystem restoration and resilience against...
Leaf traits are key indicators of ecosystem functioning and vary not only between species but also within species and within individuals. However, within-individual variation is often neglected due to measurement limitations. Light availability, influenced by surrounding vegetation, is a major driver of leaf trait variability, especially across the strong vertical light gradients found in...
In many regions worldwide, forests suffer from climate change-induced droughts. The โhotter droughtโ in Europe in 2018 with the consecutive drought years 2019 and 2020 caused large-scale growth declines and forest dieback. We investigated if tree growth responses to the 2018โ2020 drought can be explained by functional traits related to drought tolerance, growth, and resource acquisition. We...
As climate change progresses, drought events are becoming more frequent, and water scarcity is increasingly affecting plant productivity and survival. Plants access water through their root systems, which involve various root economic traits related to belowground resource acquisition. Therefore, it is critical to study the role of key root traits involved in water uptakeโsuch as root system...
Herbaceous dominated ecosystems โ including grasslands, savannas, and shrublands โ cover almost half of earthโs terrestrial land surface and play a key role in carbon sequestration. Understanding how they maintain productivity under environmental stress is crucial for climate mitigation. Recent evidence from forests suggests that conservative species outperform fast-growing ones under...
Soil sustains life beyond water and forms the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems. Our project aims to deepen the understanding of soil stability and its pivotal role in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF). We specifically focus on the multidimensional intra- and inter-annual stability of soil properties.
This research is conducted within the framework of the Jena Experiment, where...
