iDiv Annual Conference 2026

Contribution List

25. 180 years later: Inferring long-term distributional changes in Bavarian wildlife from a historical biodiversity survey

Thore Engel (iDiv, Uni Jena, UFZ)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Understanding long-term distributional changes of species is essential for effective conservation and biodiversity management, as well as for avoiding shifting baselines in ecological research. Historical sources—including archival documents, maps, oral histories, and paleoecological evidence—can help reconstruct past ecological patterns and processes. In this study we assessed long-term...

20. A 30 m Forest Condition Time Series (2000–2022) Reveals Forest Drought Responses Across Germany

Denis Streitmatter (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH - UFZ)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Climate change is increasing the drought frequency and intensity, placing growing pressure on forest ecosystems. Assessing forest responses to such disturbances requires observations that capture both fine spatial variability and long-term coverage of multiple disturbance events. Existing approaches rely either on tree-ring data, which are spatially sparse, or on remote sensing products that...

65. A Novel Tool for the Extraction of Plant Phenology from Digitized Herbarium Specimens

Dr Matthias Körschens (Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP) Jena)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

Herbarium specimens offer valuable insights into changes of plant distribution from the past to the present, aiding in predicting future developments and responses to environmental changes. Over centuries, herbarium specimens have been collected, labeled with data like date and place of collection, collector, species name and information on habitat, and archived manually, leading to gigantic...

97. A tree identification game for urban species awareness

Daniela Hoss (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research - iDiv)

Open Session

Poster

Which tree species define Leipzig's urban landscape, and do citizens know them? Biodiversity provides many services, including contributions to human well-being: green areas consistently improve mood and quality of life. Urban trees have long life histories and pass through many human generations, becoming embedded in a place's cultural and historical memory. Yet many urban residents cannot...

82. Active Use and Passive Exposure to Urban Green Infrastructure - A Human Health Perspective

Marie Meemken (Uni Jena)

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Poster

Urbanisation has fundamentally transformed the environments in which people live, and with it the constellation of exposures that can shape human health. Urban dwellers are simultaneously subject to the protective influences of surrounding greenspace, bluespace, and tree canopy and the adverse effects of air pollution, noise, and sealed surfaces — yet the large majority of existing studies...

12. Advancing Subsurface Soil Moisture Monitoring: A Multivariate ERT Calibration for Root Zone Moisture and Tree Water Use Dynamics

Dr KHALDOUN S.A ABUALHIN (Postdoc Scientific Researcher)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Automated monitoring of root-zone soil moisture is essential for understanding tree water use and early drought stress. This study deployed an automated ERT time-lapse system along a transect with 100 electrodes at 0.5 m spacing, acquiring measurements every 8 hours in the ARBOfun Großpösna. A preprocessing workflow ensured data reliability, including removal of rainfall- and snow-affected...

6. Analysis of the long-term effects of plant species richness on soil microbial multistability

Zarah Janda

Functions

Poster

Understanding how plant diversity shapes soil ecosystem functioning over time is a central challenge in biodiversity–ecosystem functioning research. Evidence from long-term experiments suggests that both the magnitude and stability of soil processes increase with biodiversity, as facilitative interactions accumulate in species-rich communities, whereas species-poor systems tend to experience...

15. Assessing open biodiversity data to meet growing policy demands in the EU

Lina Estupinan Suarez

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

To protect biodiversity and mitigate its loss, a growing suite of policies have been implemented from global to local scales over recent decades. Within the European Union, multiple legislative frameworks aim to protect key species and habitats, control invasive alien species (IAS), reduce biodiversity loss, and conserve pollinator communities. A central requirement across these policies is...

77. Augmenting plant-pollinator interaction monitoring with AI: computer-vision pipelines from smartphones and camera traps to validation and analysis

Dr Valentin Ștefan (iDiv & UFZ)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

Plant-pollinator interactions are a candidate Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) but remain absent from the eLTER Standard Observations and from the operational core of EuropaBON, largely because traditional sampling is labour-intensive, costly, and requires taxonomic expertise that is in increasingly short supply. The Nature Restoration Regulation and the proposed EU Pollinator Monitoring...

35. Automated analysis of environmental samples for large-scale pollen monitoring

Bogusz Bujnowski (iDiv Physiological Diversity)

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Poster

Allergic diseases represent a significant global health concern, with the prevalence of allergic rhinitis estimated at approximately 10–30% among adults and around 40% among children (Pawankar et al. 2013). Pollen constitutes one of the predominant factors associated with allergic rhinitis (Pawankar et al. 2013).
Air quality monitoring, particularly with a focus on pollen loads, is currently...

46. Automated fine-scaled flowering stage classification of allergenic species using citizen science images

Sophie Moreau (Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena)

Open Session

Poster

Pollen allergies affect around 20% of the population in Central Europe. Anthropogenic changes, such as pollution and warming, are intensifying symptom severity, making pollen allergies a significant public health concern. Many allergy sufferers rely on pollen forecasts to avoid allergen exposure, yet these forecasts often lack sufficient local-scale resolution. Since the flowering phenology of...

120. Automated Transcription of Herbarium Labels

chenhuan wu

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Digitized herbarium collections represent a crucial repository of botanical data, offering invaluable historical records for biodiversity research. However, manually transcribing textual information from specimen labels remains a labor-intensive and time-consuming bottleneck for global herbaria, largely due to the high variation and unique styles of handwritten scripts. To address this...

106. BES-SIM 2: Projecting global biodiversity and ecosystem services under positive futures for people and nature

Andrés Mármol-Guijarro (Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittemberg)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

BES-SIM 2 is a global, multidisciplinary model intercomparison exercise developing future projections of biodiversity and ecosystem service change. Building on its first iteration, BES-SIM 2 draws on the Nature Futures Framework (NFF)— a set of plausible, positive futures for people and nature — to explore the combined effects of human and climate pressures across terrestrial, freshwater and...

112. BirdFutures: A Scalable Framework for Ecological Foresight Using Birds as Indicators of Biodiversity

Lisa Hildebrand (iDiv Halle-Jena Leipzig & Department of Ecological Modelling, Helmholtz UFZ)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Biodiversity is undergoing rapid decline driven by anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Addressing this trend has become a global imperative, with growing emphasis on the need to bend the curve of biodiversity loss. To effectively mitigate these changes, it is essential to improve our capacity to anticipate future biodiversity trajectories in order to plan and implement appropriate...

94. Bridging monitoring gaps in small streams: citizen science as a complement to official freshwater biomonitoring

Dr Gemma Burgazzi (UFZ/iDiv)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Despite covering less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, freshwater ecosystems support a disproportionate share of global biodiversity while being among the most threatened habitats worldwide. Small headwater streams dominate river-network length and play a critical role in maintaining freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, these systems remain poorly characterized, creating...

110. Building a pan-European biodiversity monitoring network: gaps, (in)efficiencies and priorities.

Martina Viti

Open Session

Talk

Pan-European biodiversity monitoring is increasingly needed to support EU conservation policy and underpin a coordinated Biodiversity Observation Network for Europe, yet how well existing schemes represent the continent's biodiversity remains unclear. We assessed the joint capacity of seven pan-European monitoring schemes to support an integrated terrestrial monitoring network, evaluating...

127. Can we witness symbiont evolution within a human lifetime?

Pratyaksh Singh (Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, and German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany)

Complexity

Talk

Symbionts are widespread across ecosystems and play fundamental roles in host biology. Over evolutionary time, some symbionts shift from one host species to another, where they must survive, transmit, and adapt to a novel host environment. However, we still have a limited understanding of how symbionts establish in new hosts, how rapidly they adapt, and how their effects on host fitness change...

87. Cell wall traits shape leaf drought tolerance in subtropical dry and wet forests

Dr Mengcheng Duan (Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Functions

Poster

Cellular and leaf structural traits influence the regulation of leaf water balance, which in turn impacts leaf gas exchange, plant productivity and drought tolerance. Yet, the role of cell wall composition, and especially that of components that render cell walls flexible—such as pectin—in leaf water relations remains elusive. Here, we investigate the linkages among 26 traits, including cell...

57. Characterizing and predicting mammal communities using camera trap and remote sensing data

Dr Pedro Mittelman (iDiv/MLU)

Complexity

Talk

Changes in species composition (beta diversity) provide key insights into the ecological processes structuring communities. Identifying the drivers of beta diversity is essential for predicting how communities may reorganize under increasing anthropogenic pressures.
Here, we present a workflow that integrates camera-trap observations with remote-sensing data to model and predict spatial and...

133. Citizen Science – How To?

Dr Gemma Burgazzi, Louisa-Marie von Plüskow, Prof. Aletta Bonn, Mr Roland Bischof

Workshop

Workshop

Workshops

This session will be a hand-on session how to do good citizen science. There will be lightning-talks of ongoing citizen science projects, followed by a world cafe to exchange hands-on tips & tricks how to design, conduct and evaluate a citizen science project. How to engage volunteers and make it an enriching experience from a scientific, social and political transformational perspective. This...

16. Climatic niche properties interact with land-use in predicting plant responses to climate variability in a global change experiment

Thibault Coquery (Department of Species Interaction Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany, Department of Community Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Halle, Germany, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany, Department Geobotany and Botanical Garden, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany)

Complexity

Talk

Experimental ecology and macroecology both contribute to predicting species’ responses to climate change, yet each has limitations. Recent integrative studies have shown that even coarse characterization of species’ climatic niche can help explain plant responses to experimental climate manipulations. Nevertheless, interactions between local factors, such as land-use, and the broader...

78. Cloud, vegetation, and climate: interactions and implications

Hao Luo (Leipzig University)

Open Session

Talk

Cloud, vegetation, and climate are tightly coupled. On the one hand, clouds regulate surface radiation and water availability, thereby influencing photosynthesis; on the other hand, vegetation modifies land-atmosphere fluxes and feeds back on cloud formation and radiative forcing. Here, we synthesize recent advances from these two complementary perspectives.
The first part examines the...

84. Co-developing and evaluating scenarios for restoring landscape elements in agricultural regions across Europe

A. Cristina de la Vega-Leinert (BIOP - iDiv - UFZ), Guy Pe'er (UFZ / iDiv, department of Biodiversity and People), Dr Jennifer Hauck (CoKnow)

Workshop

Workshop

Workshops

Landscape Features (LF) – such as hedgerows, flower strips, ponds, tree patches, and terraces – are key elements of agricultural landscapes that mediate biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and land-use intensity. As semi-natural structures in human-dominated systems, they contribute to habitat provision, ecosystem service delivery, and landscape connectivity. In the context of biodiversity...

128. Co-producing Urban Biodiversity Knowledge through Citizen Science: Lessons from the VielFalterGarten Project

Stefanie Henkel (Biodiversity and People)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Urbanisation increasingly threatens biodiversity, while cities simultaneously offer important opportunities for conservation and ecological restoration. Urban green spaces can provide refuges for diverse insect communities, including butterflies, which are highly suitable bioindicators due to their sensitivity to habitat change, environmental stressors, and landscape fragmentation. Their...

34. COLLECTION BASED STUDIES ON THE BRYOPHYTE FLORA FROM CUBA

Bernardo Daniel Cañiza Ovelar (Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function at Friedrich Schiller University Jena Herbarium Haussknecht (JE))

Open Session

Talk

The aim of the present study is to contribute to the understanding of the diversity of the Cuban bryophyte flora within a historical and geographical context, based on a revision of herbarium specimens primarily held at the herbaria Haussknecht (JE) in Jena, Germany and EGR from the Department of Botany and Ecology in Eszterházy University in Eger, Hungary, as well as duplicates and original...

132. Community-Based Solid Waste Management and Ecological Forecasting: Enhancing Urban Slope Resilience and Soil Biodiversity in Bukavu (DRC)

Armande Lwahamire Nabintu (Fondation Anansoft)

Functions

Poster

steep, high-density tropical cities, improper solid waste management and topsoil erosion severely impair urban ecosystem functions, triggering devastating landslides and disrupting soil macroinvertebrate communities. In Bukavu (DRC), unstable topography combined with uncontrolled waste dumping threatens both human settlements and urban micro-habitats.
​This contribution, led by the Anansoft...

69. Comparative landscape genomics of connectivity in three co-occurring bumble bee species

Christopher Wild (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Naturkundemuseum Erfurt)

Open Session

Talk

Anthropogenic landscape change increasingly alters the movement of organisms and the exchange of genes across landscapes, yet predicting its effects on functional connectivity remains a major challenge in ecology and evolution. Gene flow across heterogeneous environments can be shaped by multiple, non-mutually exclusive processes, including isolation by distance (IBD), isolation by resistance...

88. Comparing the political, economic, scientific, environmental and social impact of citizen science projects

Louisa-Marie von Plüskow

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Citizen science projects are often praised for their capacity to foster agency, promote collective environmental action, and enhance knowledge and trust in science. However, measuring these impacts remains challenging and has rarely been conducted in a holistic way. Our study aims to assess the impacts of four citizen science projects by considering five key dimensions: political, economic,...

13. Conservation status of key protected areas in the forest-savannah transition zone of Ghana based on red list and genetic heat indices

Afua Amponsah Amankwah (University of Félix Houphouët-Boigny)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Poster

Protected areas are the mainstay of biodiversity, serving as important habitats for
endangered and threatened species. However, increasing anthropogenic activities
threaten their long-term sustainability. This study assessed the conservation status
of Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary (BFMS) and Kogyae Strict Nature Reserve
(KSNR), two wildlife-protected areas in the transition zone of Ghana,...

98. Crowd-sensed plants as living sensors of ecosystem state and functioning

Susanne Tautenhahn (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena)

Functions

Talk

Plants encode local environmental conditions through their species composition and ecological indicator values, making them powerful bioindicators of ecosystem state. Plant functional traits, in turn, reflect physiology, form, and function. Leveraging millions of crowd-sensed plant observations from automated plant identification and citizen science platforms (e.g. Flora Incognita,...

114. Despite population declines, energy demand has remained broadly stable in North American bird communities

Daria Lipsky (iDiv)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Bird communities are fundamental to ecosystem functioning, yet how their community reorganisation under global change affects ecosystem energetics remains poorly understood. Using 58 years of North American Breeding Bird Survey data from 5,870 routes (1966-2023), we tracked co-variation among species richness, abundance, community evenness, and community-level energy demand. Total abundance...

89. Does soil diversity shape microbial and nutrient responses to pollen deposition?

Aleksandra Pienkowska (iDiv; UFZ)

Complexity

Talk

Pollen deposition may be a major but overlooked seasonal nutrient input to forest soils. Wind-pollinated trees can release up to 4000 kg/ha of nutrient-rich pollen, most of which is deposited onto soil rather than reaching stigmas (Greenfield et al., 1996). Yet, its effects on soil microbial physiology and nutrient dynamics remain poorly understood. An additional layer of complexity arises...

48. Don’t call it (just) Citizen Science Data!

Michael Rzanny (Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena)

Open Session

Poster

Citizen Science data are widely used in ecological research. Yet, the term “Citizen Science data” is often applied as a broad label that overlooks the vast diversity of how such data are collected.
Citizen Science datasets vary widely in quality, ranging from opportunistic point observations to structured recording schemes and well-curated datasets. Broad generalizations risk undervaluing the...

92. Drivers of Bird-window Collisions in Continental European Birds

David Tan (iDiv)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Window collisions are one of the leading anthropogenic drivers of urban bird mortalities globally, and are responsible for the deaths of approximately 100 million birds every year in Germany. Despite the scale and magnitude of this problem, little is known about how the urban landscape shapes the spatial distribution of bird-window collisions, especially in continental Europe. By combining...

101. Drought-induced attenuation of vertical leaves Δδ¹³C gradients in temperate tree canopies

Emily Solly (Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung GmbH - UFZ)

Functions

Talk

Droughts increasingly affect the functioning of forests worldwide and compromise their capacity to mitigate climate change. Over the past decade, forests in central Europe have experienced unprecedented sequences of consecutive drought years, resulting in widespread tree mortality and substantial economic and ecological losses. In our study, we examine tree physiological responses to a series...

74. Earthworm density regulates depth-dependent carbon dynamics in degraded alpine peat soils

Hui Zhang (Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig – iDiv)

Functions

Poster

Peatlands store a disproportionately large share of global soil carbon, yet their stability is increasingly threatened by drying-induced degradation. Such degradation may create conditions that facilitate colonization of earthworms, although they are typically absent from waterlogged peat soils. However, how earthworm colonization alters peatland carbon dynamics remains poorly understood....

130. Eco-Hydrological Modelling and WASH: A Pillar for Human Well-Being and Urban Biodiversity in Bukavu (DRC)

Joseph Nonozi Bahati (Fondation Anansoft)

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Poster

In rapidly growing cities of the Global South, the degradation of biodiversity and the breakdown of WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) infrastructure form a vicious cycle that threatens both public health and ecological resilience. In Bukavu (DRC), anthropogenic pressure on the Lake Kivu watershed exacerbates soil erosion, destroys aquatic habitats, and amplifies waterborne disease crises...

59. Effects of proximity to human-associated infrastructure on infant development in the Critically Endangered crested macaques (Macaca nigra) on Sulawesi, Indonesia

Rija Andriamifidy (University of Leipzig and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Anthropogenic landscape change increasingly brings wildlife into close proximity to humans and human-associated infrastructure, yet little is known about how its effects early social development in non-human primates. Because infancy represents a key developmental stage during which social interactions shape behavioral competence, disturbance during this period may have important consequences...

14. Effects of Restoration Methods on Woody Plant and Bird Diversity in the Sidama Region, Ethiopia.

Aklilu Wola (UFZ/MLU/iDiv)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Abstract
Land degradation and subsequent biodiversity loss are serious environmental problems, especially in Ethiopia where soil erosion is high and the human population is rapidly growing. Exclosures to prevent heavy grazing either by passive restoration (natural regeneration without planting) or active restoration (with planting) are widely used as methods to restore biodiversity, but their...

90. Effects of Tree Diversity on Litter Dwellers During Early Decomposition

Diana Morales Fonseca (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig)

Complexity

Poster

Litter decomposition is a key process in terrestrial ecosystems, representing the primary mechanism of carbon turnover and driving the cycling of nutrients such as nitrogen and sulfur. In addition to nutrient release, decomposition influences soil structure by affecting porosity, aeration, and the distribution of organic matter within the soil environment. This process involves an...

55. European Topic Centre Biodiversity and Ecosystems: Benefits and challenges of assisting policy development and implementation as expert contractors to the EU

Brigitte Braschler (iDiv and Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Poster

In 2023, our research group stepped out of the academic comfort zone and became a key partner in the European Topic Centre Biodiversity and Ecosystems (ETC BE), which advises and assists the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Commission (EC) in devising and implementing biodiversity-related policy.
The contracted term for the ETC BE ends this year and the wider European Topic...

104. Evaluating a protected area portfolio against global biodiversity and climate goals

Alke Voskamp (FSU)

Open Session

Poster

Protected areas are one of the most important tools to preserve species and biodiversity. With limited conservation funding, expectations and demands on protected area networks are manyfold, e.g. protecting species, ensuring ecosystem functioning, or mitigating climate change. This necessitates a prioritization of conservation effort and continuous evaluation of protected area portfolios...

103. Extreme weather variability and bird distribution dynamics in Central Europe

Aaron Hagen Kauffeldt (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv), Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

Complexity

Poster

Understanding how species respond to increasing frequency of extreme weather events is important for predicting biodiversity change in a rapidly shifting climate. While long-term climatic trends are known to drive gradual range shifts, short-term redistribution of species in response to abrupt extremes remains less well quantified. In the first phase of this project, a dynamic occupancy...

116. Extremes – for whom? Creating climatic envelopes for common tree species in Germany and the iDiv ARBOfun platform to assess departure from experienced climate during extreme events

David Schellenberger Costa (iDiv Halle-Leipzig-Jena, Leipzig University)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Climate change triggers long-term changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, among others, but also increases the likelihood of anomalies, like extreme heat, cold, or drought. The common tree species growing in Germany as well as potential candidate species from other regions planted in the iDiv research platform ARBOfun differ in their native distributions and thus in the climatic...

121. From disturbance responses to temporal dynamics: Resilience metrics in Earth observation (EO) supported ecology

Sophie Wolf (Leipzig University)

Functions

Poster

The increasing availability of Earth observation (EO) and ecosystem flux time series has led to rapid growth in the use of “resilience metrics” to characterize ecosystem dynamics under global change. Metrics such as resistance, recovery, variability, autocorrelation, and memory are increasingly applied across ecosystems and spatial scales, often with the aim of identifying vulnerable systems...

100. From ecosystem service dependencies to spatial biodiversity impact hotspots in food supply chains

Jan Kalusche (German Centre for Integrative Biodaiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv), Helmholtz Centre for environmental research (UFZ))

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Assessing dependencies on ecosystem services and impacts on biodiversity along food supply chains is difficult because company data on raw materials differ in specificity, traceability, and spatial resolution. This is particularly relevant for globally traded agricultural commodities, for which companies may know quantities and countries of origin, but not exact production locations within...

28. From NetCDF to Web Maps: Building an Open-Source Web GIS for Biodiversity Data Cubes

Mr Christian Langer (iDiv / Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) provide a standardized framework for monitoring global changes in biodiversity. While the [EBV Data Portal][1] enables discovery and cataloging of geospatial EBV datasets, users often require tools to interactively explore the underlying spatiotemporal dimensions for research, monitoring, and evidence-based policy support.

In this presentation we...

115. Future Land Use Scenarios Present Opportunities and Risks for the Conservation of Continental Ecological Connectivity

Jeremy Dertien (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Fragmentation of viable habitat patches by human land use change is a global threat to the maintenance of biodiversity and resilient ecosystems. This threat is compounded by climate change which will require many animal and plant species to shift their natural geographic ranges to stay within a sustainable habitat-climate envelope. Currently, there is general concern that the configuration of...

61. Generative Trait Variability of Cyperaceae Juss. In Context of Phylogeny and Plant Ecology

Dr Sebastian Gebauer (1Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function Jena (SIP) Jena - Leibniz Institution for Biodiversity and Earth System Research, Philosophenweg 12, Jena, Germany, 2Institute of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Philosophenweg 16, Jena, Germany)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

Homoplasy is widespread in macro- and micromorphological traits of vascular plants, particularly in vegetative characters, which often show limited phylogenetic signal. In contrast, generative traits such as floral characteristics are generally considered more conserved, as demonstrated for embryo architecture and development in Cyperaceae Juss. However, recent work has revealed substantial...

42. Genetic responses to landscape history of a semi-natural grassland plant’s populations across Europe

Marie Ende (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Complexity

Talk

Semi-natural grasslands are one of the most species-rich ecosystems of Europe but have undergone particularly strong habitat changes due to land use intensification and abandonment. Over the past decades, the area of semi-natural grasslands in Europe has been drastically reduced. With declining area, the remaining populations in these habitats became smaller, more isolated, and increasingly...

33. Global patterns of marcescence: Retention of withered organs in perennial herbs

Tereza Maskova

Functions

Poster

Marcescence, the retention of withered plant organs over winter that would otherwise be shed, remains poorly studied in perennial herbs, despite its potential role in plant phenology and adaptation to climate change, including increasingly extreme conditions at the onset and end of the growing season. Marcescent biomass can protect developing tissues from water, light, or temperature stress,...

76. Global patterns of soil beta diversity across multiple taxonomic groups

Pubin Hong (iDiv)

Complexity

Talk

Soil harbors a substantial proportion of global biodiversity, yet its large-scale biogeographic patterns remain poorly understood. Previous studies have primarily focused on local diversity (i.e. alpha diversity) within individual soil taxonomic groups, whereas global patterns of community turnover across sites (i.e., beta diversity) remains largely unexplored. To address this knowledge gap,...

24. Herbarium-Based Insights into Long-Term Flowering Phenology and Leaf Nutrients in Mongolian Steppe Species

Anna Vincze

Complexity

Poster

Herbarium collections provide a unique long-term archive for assessing plant responses to environmental change across broad spatial and temporal scales. We use approximately 4,000 herbarium specimens collected mainly between 1960 and 2025 across the entire territory of Mongolia to investigate long-term shifts in plant phenology in typical steppe ecosystems. The dataset includes 16 focal...

86. Herbivore Assemblages Regulate Soil Multifunctionality through Microbial Diversity and Keystone Taxa in an Alpine Grassland

Ms Jinyu Zhao (School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China)

Functions

Poster

Grazing is a dominant land use in alpine grasslands, yet it remains unclear whether different livestock assemblages can enhance soil multifunctionality through shifts in soil microbial diversity and network organization. We tested this question in a long-term, moderate-intensity grazing experiment on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, comparing yak-only grazing, Tibetan sheep-only grazing, three...

21. How are the oak-Scleroderma ectomycorrhiza and associated bacteria affected by drought and its legacy?

Erik Teutloff (Department of Agroecosystems, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Halle (Saale), 06120, Germany)

Complexity

Talk

Temperate forests provide vital ecosystem services, but foundation species such as the European pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) are under increasing threat from extreme drought. The PhytOakmeter project studies how clonal oak trees and their associated microbiomes respond to, acclimate to, and eventually adapt to water limitations. Tree water and nutrient uptake are enhanced by...

71. How long is long enough? Capturing long-term dynamics with trends

Kimberly Thompson (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) / Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Understanding biodiversity change often relies on estimating temporal trends to quantify the direction and magnitude of population and community change. These trend estimates shape our conclusions about which assemblages are changing most rapidly and guide conservation decisions about where limited resources should be directed. Yet some populations and communities that appear to follow...

45. How to Identify Patches of Hyperspectral Entropy in Forest Soil Profiles from Fläming, Germany

Dr Riffat Rahim (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig – iDiv , Johannisallee 19a 04103 Leipzig)

Complexity

Poster

Forest soils exhibit strong depth-related spatial heterogeneities, with localized hotspot zones that regulate key ecosystem processes and contribute to soil resilience. Conventional bulk soil measurements are limited in their ability to capture this fine-scale variability. This study aims to explore the potential of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) to quantify spatial heterogeneity and by this to...

96. Hugging trees - A refined look at physical tree-tree interactions

Alexander Täuber (Technical University Dresden, DE; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, DE)

Functions

Talk

Tree-tree interactions have been identified as a key mechanism linking biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. The complementary occupation of canopy space by coexisting species increases canopy packing and promotes community productivity. Several studies have applied the theoretical volumetric complementarity approach using the crown complementarity index (CCI). While effective at...

30. iBarc Support Unit …supports biodiversity research through metabarcoding

Nadine Möbius (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv))

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

Metabarcoding is a powerful approach to study biodiversity across a wide range of organisms and ecosystems. However, integrating molecular data into ecological research remains challenging.
The iBarc Support Unit at iDiv provides guidance, infrastructure, and expertise to researchers interested in integrating metabarcoding approaches into their projects. We offer to accompany you throughout...

38. iCyt, the integrative Cytomics support platform of iDiv

Susanne Dunker (UFZ, iDiv (PHYDIV))

Open Session

Poster

Diversity of microscopic biological particles plays a crucial role in important ecosystem services, e.g. water quality (phytoplankton), air quality or pollination (pollen). Many human-driven activities like climate change, eutrophication or invasive species are expected to massively change the composition of these particles. Monitoring of these tiny particles is therefore an essential task in...

44. Illuminating Africa’s plant diversity dark spots: NaijaFLO

Alexandra Müllner-Riehl

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Africa harbours an exceptional diversity of plant life, yet major knowledge gaps remain regarding both species discovery and species distributions. These limitations, commonly referred to as the Linnean and Wallacean shortfalls, constrain our ability to conduct reliable biogeographical analyses, evaluate conservation priorities, and assess extinction risks.
Here, we present the Database of...

62. Impact of oil palm plantation use on the gut microbiome of Malaysian macaques

Miriam Simon

Complexity

Poster

Oil palm cultivation dominates large parts of Southeast Asia and profoundly alters tropical forest ecosystems through habitat fragmentation. Some wildlife species have partly adapted to these human-modified landscapes, including southern pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina) which regularly forage in oil palm plantations. Previous research by our group found reduced infant survival...

53. Influence of drier environmental conditions on fine root functional traits in beech forests

Adriana Rendon-Funes (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ))

Functions

Talk

Forests cover nearly a third of Earth’s land and provide key ecosystem services. With climate change, forests face intensified drought episodes and shifting precipitation regimes. While important advances have been made to improve our understanding of tree responses to drier conditions, effects on belowground processes remain elusive, despite their importance for shaping forest functioning....

66. Investigating the impact of aboveground invertebrate decline on belowground energy fluxes

Ioannis Constantinou (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig / University of Leipzig)

Functions

Poster

Ecosystem processes and multifunctionality are impacted by global change through the alteration of above-belowground multitrophic communities in terrestrial ecosystems. Global change manifests in many ways, one of them being the decline of aboveground invertebrate communities. Sharp invertebrate declines have been reported for German grasslands in particular, with heretofore little information...

27. Land-use transition pathways drive scale-dependent changes in bird biodiversity across China

Sun Zhang

Complexity

Talk

Land-use change has transformed nearly three-quarters of terrestrial ecosystems and remains a major driver of biodiversity change. In China, recent policies aimed at balancing food security and ecological conservation have substantially reshaped land-use patterns, yet their consequences for bird biodiversity remain insufficiently quantified. We applied the countryside species-area relationship...

81. LEPMON: Development of hardware tools for the effective monitoring of nocturnal insects

Gunnar Brehm

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

The drastic global decline in insect populations poses a severe threat to ecosystems worldwide. However, a major bottleneck in understanding these trends is the lack of affordable, reliable, and scalable monitoring methods. The LEPMON (Lepidoptera Monitoring) project addresses this gap by developing a framework for the comprehensive monitoring of moths and other nocturnal insects in Germany....

11. LEPMON: Monitoring nocturnal insects using cameras and AI: first results of a collaborative project

Roel van Klink (MLU)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Two parallel trends have spurred the development of automated insect monitoring technology: increasing awareness of insect population declines and growing capabilities of artificial intelligence. LEPMON is a collaborative project of five German institutes aiming to design and test an AI-driven system for species-level monitoring of moths and other nocturnal insects. The project encompasses...

41. Linking species selection, restoration objectives, and decision-making in the Nigerian drylands

João de Deus Vidal Junior (Leipzig University, LeipzigLab, Leipzig)

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Talk

Ecosystem restoration is a key strategy for mitigating biodiversity loss and climate change. In the Sahel, large-scale regreening aims to reverse desertification, increase vegetation cover, and enhance ecosystem functioning. These efforts often involve the introduction or re-establishment of plant species, but the selection of species and practices varies widely across projects. Although such...

50. Local population dynamics shape biodiversity patterns in fragmented landscapes

Zachary Hajian-Forooshani (iDiv)

Complexity

Talk

Although the negative effects of habitat loss on biodiversity are arguably well understood, there is active debate regarding the isolated effects of fragmentation per-se. While the empirical literature suggests a variety of effects of fragmentation on biodiversity, there are few theoretical frameworks for understanding when divergent responses should be expected. Here we show how assumptions...

85. Microbial Community Database (MiCoDa), a Curated Repository for Global Microbiome Data Reuse

Dr Clara Arboleda-Baena (Department of Applied Microbial Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, 04318, Germany)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

The rapid growth of metabarcoding data for studying bacteria worldwide requires extensive curation and bioinformatics expertise, while the computational demands of processing large sequencing datasets often limit data reuse by researchers without specialized infrastructure or training. Here, we present the Microbial Community Database (MiCoDa), a curated repository of published and...

18. Microbial predators under pressure: soil protist community shifts under long-term fertilization.

Nicola Schilling (Applied Microbial Ecology, UfZ Leipzig, yDiv)

Functions

Poster

Protists are the most abundant predators in soils. Despite their abundance, they have only recently gained more attention in soil ecological studies. Understanding their biotic interactions and how they shape microbial communities is particularly important given the increasing anthropogenic pressure on ecosystems. Long-term fertilization (LTF), one of the most pervasive human impacts on soils,...

108. Monitoring ecological integrity to guide ecosystem restoration

Magali Weissgerber (MLU / iDiv)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Ecological integrity has become a central objective in international and national conservation and restoration policies, yet its practical definition and monitoring remain highly heterogeneous. Here, we review how ecological integrity is defined and measured across ecosystems and scales, and identify key challenges in translating broad conceptual definitions into operational indicators....

8. Mycorrhiza in Tree Diversity-Ecosystem Function Relationships: the first ten years of the iDiv experimental platform MyDiv

Dr Olga Ferlian (iDiv)

Functions

Poster

The widely observed positive relationship between plant diversity and ecosystem functioning is thought to be driven by complementary resource use of plant species. Biotic interactions among plants and between plants and soil organisms are suggested to drive key aspects of resource-use complementarity. The young tree diversity experiment MyDiv aims to integrate biotic interactions across guilds...

29. Nataliia Tereshchenko

Nataliia Tereshchenko

Complexity

Poster

Nataliia Tereshchenko
Methodology of PAHs and threshold dynamics research in oilseed‑based food chains.
This research focuses on methodology and systematic monitoring of agroecosystems, with particular attention to xenobiotics in lipid‑containing plant products. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), as lipophilic contaminants, pose carcinogenic risks to food chains when their gradual...

129. ORCHIDACEAE AS A GLOBAL MODEL FOR BIODIVERSITY–CHEMODIVERSITY MISMATCHES AND BIOGEOGRAPHIC RESEARCH GAPS

Andrés Felipe Vásquez (Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB-Halle))

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Natural products (NPs) remain a major source of bioactive molecules, yet chemical exploration of biodiversity is highly uneven across plant lineages and ecosystems. Orchidaceae, one of the largest and most diverse plant families, is ecologically and economically prominent, but its global chemodiversity and associated research biases have not been systematically quantified. In this work, we...

17. Order Statistics as a Basis for Modelling Species Abundance Patterns

Luis Borda de Agua (iDiv)

Complexity

Talk

The species abundance distribution (SAD) is a fundamental representation of biodiversity, describing both the number of species in a community and the allocation of individuals among them. In contrast to the species–area relationship (SAR), which is inherently scale-dependent, the SAD is typically examined at a fixed spatial scale, despite the fact that its form must vary with sampling extent....

83. Patterns of ecological marginality in regional plant extinctions

Paola Barajas Barbosa (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Department of Community Ecology, Halle (Saale), Germany)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Understanding the patterns and drivers of plant extinction is crucial for anticipating biodiversity dynamics under ongoing global change. Species niches, defined in geographic and climatic space, and particularly species’ positions within niche space are known to influence regional extinction. Thus, regional extinctions are unlikely to be evenly distributed across niche space due to variation...

23. PhenObs@herbaria: A New Protocol to Synchronize Phenological Observations from Physical Herbarium Records with Field-Based Observations

Josephine Ulrich (Friedrich Schiller University, Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP) Jena)

Functions

Poster

Long-term phenological data is essential for climate change research, yet consistent, multi-century datasets are scarce. While herbaria provide a unique temporal archive, the recent reliance on digitised specimen images has limitations, as many subtle phenological traits are invisible or distorted in 2D formats. In this poster, we present the conceptual framework for PhenObs@herbaria, a new...

67. Phenological responses to extremes across growth forms, phenological strategies and phenological niche

Andrea Silva-Cala (Plant Biodiversity group. FSU Jena)

Open Session

Poster

In temperate zones, warmer springs shift leaf-out and flowering to earlier dates. Likewise, phenology shifts affect water and carbon cycles, influencing the climate system. Despite progress in understanding phenology-climate dynamics, gaps remain on how weather extremes impact phenology, especially using long-term and ground-based data, which offer detailed information about species that...

70. Phylogenomic and transcriptomic insights into the repeated evolution of fruit types in angiosperms

Ding-Jie Wang

Functions

Talk

Fruits are key innovations in angiosperms, with dry and fleshy types reflecting distinct reproductive and ecological strategies. Dry fruits mainly rely on abiotic dispersal or mechanical release, whereas fleshy fruits attract frugivores through nutritional rewards and visual signals. Although dry and fleshy fruits evolved repeatedly across angiosperms, the molecular changes underlying the...

58. Plant macrophenological dynamics - synchronisation revealed by citizen science data

Karin Mora (Institute for Earth System Science and Remote Sensing, Leipzig University)

Complexity

Talk

Phenological changes are key indicators of climate change. While most studies focus on individual species, plant macrophenology examines large-scale patterns and processes in the timing of plant life cycle events, such as flowering, across extensive spatial and temporal scales. Traditional methods often struggle to capture the complexity of these patterns. To address this, we developed a novel...

49. Potential of multiselective GCMS for eco-metabolomics on bumblebees

Ferdinand Krause (Universität Leipzig)

Functions

Poster

Bees, especially bumblebees, are crucial to ecosystems and humanity as pollinators, supporting biodiversity and crop production. However, their populations are declining related to global warming, pesticides, invasive species, pathogens, and agricultural intensification. Effective conservation requires a deep understanding of bee-environment interactions and efficient health monitoring. Mass...

102. Prioritising Biodiversity in Times of Multiple Challenges—Evidence from a Large-N Media Analysis

Mr Richard Völker (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Talk

Biodiversity loss is a key challenge of our time, yet it competes for public attention with armed conflicts, pandemics, rising costs of living, migration, and other issues. Human cognitive capacity for processing information is inherently limited, meaning these concerns interact in complex ways, amplifying or crowding out one another in public discourse. Mass media play a pivotal role in...

72. R Environment for Environmental Sciences: Four Packages Worth Knowing

Alban Sagouis

Open Session

Poster

Reproducibility in ecological research is a known problem with a less-known solution: not one tool, but a small, composable set of them. This poster introduces four R packages that, used together,
address most of the practical pain points researchers encounter between raw data and published results.

Each panel maps to one package. renv handles the environment itself — separate package...

54. Recovery of Bryophyte Species Diversity after Revitalization Measures in the Klosterlaunitzer Mire through Floristic Mapping and Environmental Data

Greta Störkmann (Institute for Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution, Friedrich-Schiller University (FSU), Philosophenweg 12, 07743 Jena, Germany; Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function Jena (SIP), Philosophenweg 12, 07743 Jena, Germany)

Functions

Poster

The Klosterlausnitz mire is the largest peatland in eastern Thuringia. The project area is part of the ‘Sümpfe und Wälder bei Bad Klosterlausnitz’ nature reserve and is located within the Flora-Fauna-Habitat (FFH) conservation area of the same name. Peat extraction, eutrophication, and the construction of the A9 motorway through the site have severely disrupted the water and nutrient balance...

31. Sample size and identification techniques alter soil nematode community assessment

Lu Wang (UFZ Leipzig)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Nematodes are abundant and diverse in soil, influencing microbial community composition, plant performance, and nutrient cycling, and serving as vital bioindicators of soil ecology and health. While metabarcoding techniques have become highly standardized in the identification of microbial (i.e., bacterial and fungal) communities, similar techniques are still under development for soil...

40. Scaling flower trait phenotyping: Deep learning and large crowdsourced imagery reveal spatiotemporal flower coloration gradients in Alpine gentians

Ladislav Hodac (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Quantifying intraspecific trait variation on a large scale is essential to understanding how biodiversity responds to environmental changes. However, high-resolution phenotypic data has historically been scarce in complex, mountainous landscapes. This study presents a scalable, automated pipeline that extracts flower color traits (FCTs), such as CIELAB coordinates and hue, from unstructured...

80. Schoolyard Biodiversity Monitoring with Children: Effects on Human-Nature-Relationships

Lina von Wedel (UFZ/iDiv)

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Poster

Nature contact is beneficial for children, positively influencing well-being and nature connectedness. At the same time, citizen science is increasingly used to support biodiversity monitoring across large spatial and temporal scales. Schoolyards represent a promising setting that could combine both, providing everyday nature contact while contributing to biodiversity data collection....

56. Sediment type rather than seasonality shapes microbial functional potential in Belgian North Sea sediments: a metagenomic perspective

Menahil Fatima

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

Marine sediments are hotspots of microbial activity and play a key role in cycling carbon, nitrogen and sulfur at the sea floor. In shallow coastal areas like the Belgian part of the North Sea, sediment characteristics can vary considerably over short distances, from muddy organic rich deposits to coarse permeable sands, creating very different conditions for microbial life. Yet we still know...

113. Short-term response of plant communities and intraspecific traits to large-scale forest disturbance

Florian Steinebrunner (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena)

Functions

Talk

Post-disturbance forest sites represent a mosaic of microclimates depending on deadwood and understory characteristics. At the same time, early-successional plant communities vary in their species and functional composition. However, how fine-scale microclimatic variation drives trait patterns in this context remains insufficiently explored. Here, we quantified the short-term effect of...

60. Small bodied mammals show more constraint in their jaw ecomorphologies than large bodied mammals

Gemma Benevento (iDiv)

Open Session

Talk

Mammals underwent a taxonomic and morphological adaptive radiation across the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary. Morphological adaptations to the jaw, relating to disparate feeding ecologies, have been shown to increase in disparity during the Cenozoic. Mammal body mass also increases across the K/Pg boundary and is intrinsically linked to many aspects of a mammal’s ecological niche,...

105. Sniffing out danger: African Elephants Response to Lion-Derived Olfactory Cues

Maya Heyland

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Poster

With agricultural land use continuing to increase, habitat fragmentation worsens, intensifying human-wildlife conflicts across sub-Saharan Africa. Among the most persistent challenges are those involving African elephants (Loxodonta africana), whose activities through anthropogenic areas often result in crop damage, economical loss, and occasionally human and elephant fatalities. A primary...

64. Speaking louder than words: An actionable communication framework supporting evidence-informed biodiversity policy

Dr Naama Teschner (Ben-Gurion University)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Poster

Disagreements persist over how to increase the uptake of scientific evidence in biodiversity conservation policy-making. Communication experts recommend using dialogical and participatory practices over linear dissemination of research outcomes. Current science-policy interface scholarship, however, lacks insights from theoretical developments in science communication, which support scientists...

7. Specificity of foliar fungal endophyte communities in subtropical forests

Tibor Drost (Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg, Institute of Biology / Geobotany and Botanical Garden, Halle (Saale), DE; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, DE)

Complexity

Talk

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...

22. Summer drought affects autumn but not flowering phenology of herbaceous species in temperate forest understories

Till Deilmann (FSU Jena)

Functions

Talk

Most phenological studies conducted in forests have focused on tree or woody species and early-season phenology, neglecting herbaceous species and autumn phenology. This leaves a gap in the mechanistic understanding of the entire life cycle of understory communities, despite their biodiversity, structural and functional role in forests. As autumn phenology is sensitive to summer droughts, this...

39. Take your biodiversity research to the next level with metabarcoding From project design to data analysis across diverse taxa and sequencing technologies An introduction to iBarc tools, services and collaborative opportunities

Martina Herrmann (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv), Cluster of Excellence „Balance of the Microverse“), María Mendez (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), Nadine Möbius (FSU Jena)

Workshop

Workshop

This workshop invites you to explore how metabarcoding can be used in your biodiversity research and provide new insights into biodiversity patterns and processes. It introduces the iBarc Support Unit and its services, spanning project planning, laboratory workflows, and bioinformatics across different taxonomic groups.
The first 45 minutes feature short talks, including an overview of iBarc...

52. Taxonomic Variation in Freshwater Insect Responses to Land Use Change

Minghua Shen

Complexity

Talk

In freshwater biomonitoring, a common assumption is that members of the ordersEphemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera(collectively known as (EPT) are generally more sensitive to environmental degradation than other insect orders (non-EPT), and this assumption underlies the widespread use macroinvertebrate indices that specifically focus on these taxa. However, while EPT are often good...

43. Temporal changes in forest habitat types across European temperate forests

Liping Wei (Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

Complexity

Talk

Long-term community dynamics are typically characterized by changes in species composition and diversity, whereas shifts among entire communities and habitat types remain underexplored. The objective of this study is to quantify temporal changes in forest habitat types across European temperate forests and to determine how these changes are associated with shifts in typical species, as well as...

68. Text-Enhanced Representation Learning for Fine-Grained Species Classification

Christian Ickler

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Poster

Biodiversity monitoring provides essential insights into ecosystem dynamics, enabling informed decision-making for conservation and sustainable development. A key component of this effort is the automated classification of species from imagery, a task where deep learning models have recently achieved significant progress. However, fine-grained visual classification remains a challenge when...

131. The Conservation Status and Trend Index (CSTI): A Unified Metric for Assessing EU Biodiversity

Jose Valdez (idiv)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

State of Nature reporting under Article 17 of the Habitats Directive generates comprehensive datasets on European biodiversity, yet presenting conservation status and trends separately often obscures genuine ecological shifts behind administrative or methodological updates. To address this complexity, the Conservation Status and Trend Index (CSTI) was developed to integrate current status and...

75. The diversity of taxon-specific biochemical features of the marine red algae representing the orders Ceramiales and Gigartinales

Claudia Wiesner (Leipzig University, iDiv)

Open Session

Poster

The orders Ceramiales and Gigartinales are among the largest and most diverse taxonomic groups of red algae. Their representatives dominate the flora of Arctic and tempered seas, providing habitat and food for numerous marine species. Furthermore, many of these algae serve as sources of valuable marine-derived compounds: agar, carrageenans, biologically active phenolic substances etc. A...

9. The effects of temperature gradient on flower and fruit traits: a meta analysis

Omer Nevo (iDiv)

Functions

Talk

Angiosperm reproduction is driven by two largely animal-dependent consecutive processes: pollination and seed dispersal. Factors governing these interactions are critical for plant regeneration, habitat structure, animal communities, population genetics, and hence ecosystem stability. A major driver of plant-animal interactions is trait matching: morphological, chemical, and mechanical traits...

4. The global green wave trajectory: concept and observed north-east drift

Miguel Mahecha (Leipzig University)

Functions

Talk

Viewed from space, terrestrial vegetation exhibits a seasonal "green wave" driven by solar forcing and modulated by climate variability, ecosystem properties, and land use. This macrophenological dynamic underpins key local biological processes and global biogeochemical cycles. Here, we introduce a trajectory-based framework that quantifies global vegetation seasonality by tracking the...

2. The Hidden Costs of Climate Change Tracking: How Climate Velocity and Movement Energetics Shape Connectivity Across European Protected Areas

Gavin Stark (iDiv/MLU)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Rapid climate change is undermining the long-term capacity of protected areas (PAs) to conserve biodiversity, yet exposure metrics alone cannot reveal whether species can realistically reach areas where suitable climates may persist. Here, we develop a climate-informed connectivity framework that integrates climate velocity, PA climatic residence time, PA size, and functional connectivity...

126. The iDiv Data Portal’s Contributions to FAIR, Open, and Reproducible Research

Ludmilla Figueiredo (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity - iDiv)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

Journals and funders increasingly require researchers to publish all outputs of their work, given the essential role in impactful and reproducible science. For data and code in particular, the effectiveness of publishing these materials depends greatly on their quality, which is heavily influenced by its documentation. At iDiv, researchers can publish data and code at the iDiv Data Portal, a...

122. The illusion of diversity: sampling design drives conflicting estimates of soil richness across bacterial and eukaryotic communities

Maria Kostakou (UFZ Leipzig)

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

Soil communities harbour exceptional diversity across the tree of life, yet their richness remains systematically underestimated due to methodological constraints in field sampling and sequencing. Physical homogenization of multiple soil cores into composite samples is standard practice in soil ecology, under the assumption that mixing more cores better captures plot-level diversity. However,...

5. The individualised niche in motion; estimating individual niche variation with movement data

Elina Takola

Complexity

Talk

The ecological niche concept has shifted in the last decades from broad species-level definitions to include individual-level specialisation. Individuals within a species often differ consistently in behaviour, physiology, and habitat use, giving rise to ‘individualised niches’. These niches can emerge through niche choice, construction, or conformance and are shaped by intrinsic (e.g....

19. The influence of frost tolerance on the flowering phenology of herbaceous plants – field study in botanical gardens

Therese Ziegler

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Poster

With ongoing climate change, many plants are responding to changes in CO2 levels and temperatures. It was shown that frost events may become more frequent even with a general rise in temperature. In response, plants may shift their spring phenology to earlier dates and/or their range towards the poles and to higher elevations. Frost can become a potential risk for plant survival and...

117. The lifecycle strategies of soil prokaryotes and viruses contribute to higher carbon and nitrogen sequestration in grassland compared to cropland soils.

Dr Ioannis Kampouris (Applied Microbial Ecology, iDiv)

Functions

Talk

The conversion of croplands to grasslands leads to increased segregation of soil microbes and organic matter due to the absence of tillage. It also results in a higher diversity of specialized rhizodeposits that serve as nutrient sources. Organisms are often classified based on their lifecycle strategies into K-strategists and r-strategists, or as generalists and specialists, depending on...

107. The Neurocognitive Architecture of Biodiversity Exposure: An Investigation of Neural Response Patterns towards Low and High Forest Diversity Sceneries.

Kevin Rozario (UFZ / iDiv / Uni Jena / Uni Leipzig)

Biodiversity and Human Well-Being

Talk

More biodiverse nature confers a suite of mental health benefits, in particular when also perceived as such. There is, however, a substantial knowledge gap in how the human brain processes biodiversity, both measured and perceived, and how neural indicators provide insights into biodiversity-mental health linkages.
To test this, 52 participants between 18 and 35 years of age underwent four...

111. The role of protected areas in mitigation plant biodiversity loss in Germany

Marie Englert (Universität Leipzig)

Functions

Talk

Protected areas are the most important tool for combating the global biodiversity crisis, yet their effectiveness especially for vascular plants remains poorly quantified with most studies relying on qualitative rather than time-series approaches. Germany maintains one of the EU’s most extensive protected area networks, but a notable proportion predates systematic conservation planning and...

91. The role of Wolbachia symbionts in solitary bees: protectors or nurturers?

Michael Gerth (German Centre of Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig & Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Complexity

Talk

Many insect species harbour intracellular symbiotic bacteria that are passed on from mothers to offspring. These symbionts employ various strategies that enhance their proliferation, which may impact the host’s fitness in multiple ways. Wolbachia is a common facultative endosymbiont of arthropods but is especially frequent in bees an ecologically important group of pollinators. The reason...

10. Tour Botanical Garden

51. Towards causal inference for biodiversity science: an island biogeography case study

Shane Blowes

Approaches of integrative biodiversity research

Talk

Biodiversity varies in response to natural and anthropogenic drivers. Yet, most analytical tools for quantifying driver impact remain correlational, irrespective of the sophistication of the underlying statistical methodology. Unfortunately, at present, few patterns in biodiversity science have been subject to robust causal analyses, leaving even well-studied empirical patterns victim to...

119. Towards Integrative Biodiversity Research through eLTER RI: Linking Long-Term Ecosystem Observation, Data Infrastructures, and Actionable Knowledge

Jori Maylin Marx (UFZ)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Climate change, pollution, and unsustainable resource use interact across ecological and socio-ecological systems, yet biodiversity research and monitoring are often fragmented across disciplines, spatial scales, and data infrastructures. The emerging Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological Research Infrastructure (eLTER RI) addresses this challenge through...

95. Tree mycorrhizal type shapes seasonal soil microbial growth and resource acquisition strategies

Dr Qing-Fang Bi

Functions

Talk

In forest ecosystems, tree diversity and associated mycorrhiza types greatly shape microbial activity and functioning by altering resource availability and interactions among trees, mycorrhizal fungi, and microbial communities. However, the extent to which tree- mycorrhizal interactions regulate microbial growth and resource use strategies across seasons remains poorly understood. Using the...

99. Tree species richness and mycorrhizal type drive depth-dependent patterns in soil properties and microbiota r/K life-history strategies

Wenting Wang (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig - iDiv)

Functions

Poster

Tree diversity and mycorrhizal types are key drivers of belowground ecosystem processes, yet their interactive effects on microbial and soil faunal life-history strategies across soil depths remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated how tree species richness and mycorrhizal types influence the r/K life-history strategies of soil bacteria, fungi, and nematodes, and how these soil...

37. TripleBird: Projecting Biodiversity Futures to Guide Nature-Positive Decisions

Tatiane Micheletti (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Long-term effective management of ecosystems, such as forests, requires integrating ecological principles with diverse societal demands and values. Yet, such an approach is hampered by a disconnect between large-scale biodiversity monitoring data and the practical needs of decision-makers. There is an urgent need for predictive tools that can project biodiversity consequences of different...

73. TRY Plant Trait Database Version 7

Jens Kattge (MPI-BGC)

Functions

Poster

Plant traits - encompassing morphological, anatomical, biochemical, physiological, or phenological features measurable at the individual level - serve to link species richness with ecosystem functional diversity. Emphasizing traits and trait syndromes is regarded as a promising foundation for adopting a more quantitative and predictive approach in biodiversity, ecology, and global change...

47. Uncovering genetic adaptations to arid habitats in three model plants (Loasaceae) from the Atacama and Namib Desert using comparative genomics and environmental data

Julia Simonis (Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP))

Open Session

Poster

The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the oldest and driest deserts on earth and harbors over 500 endemic plant species. Among those are the two rather ancient Loasaceae lineages Prosa fruticosa and Huidobria chilensis, which appear to differ in their water requirements. While populations of P. fruticosa are found north of the 10 mm/year isohyet, receiving less than 10 mm rainfall per...

1. Urbanization reorganizes plant–pollinator networks across space, time and socio-ecological gradients

Huan Liang (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv))

Complexity

Talk

Urbanization reshapes biodiversity, yet how it interacts with spatiotemporal gradients to reorganize species interactions – and how these interactions respond to multiple socio-ecological drivers – remains poorly understood. Here we analyzed plant–pollinator interaction networks across 22 urban green spaces sampled year-round along an urbanization gradient in an underrepresented Asian...

109. Vegetation Structure and Cloud-Surface Coupling Over Southern Germany

Janet Mumo Mutuku (Leipzig University)

Functions

Poster

Landscape diversity can influence cloud development by modifying evapotranspiration, surface roughness, turbulent mixing and boundary-layer growth. However, the strength of this land-surface influence depends on whether clouds are thermodynamically connected to the surface. This ongoing study investigates how landscape and land-cover structure relate to coupled and decoupled cloud states over...

32. Warming reduces phenological synchrony among perennial herbaceous assemblages

Robert Rauschkolb

Complexity

Talk

Plant phenology is a key determinant of species performance and ecosystem functioning. While most phenological studies focus on individual species, assemblage-level patterns remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated how temperature and species’ habitat preferences shape the synchrony of vegetative and reproductive phenology among perennial herbaceous assemblages across temperate...

79. Wenhui Liu

Wenhui Liu (Leipzig Institute for Meteorology)

Complexity

Poster

Vegetation changes affect the Earth-atmosphere energy balance through both surface albedo and cloud-mediated radiative effects. However, inadequate consideration of cloud albedo feedbacks and differences among cloud types may bias estimates of regional radiative impacts. Using satellite and reanalysis data, we show that increased vegetation reduces surface albedo and leads to warming under...

63. Which fungi images matter for identification? Evaluating image perspectives for CNN-based fungal classification through latent space feature analysis

Diane Cooke (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Poster

With an estimated 5 million species, fungi represent a remarkably diverse kingdom of life. They play important roles in ecosystems, through nutrient acquisition for symbiotic plant partners, providing habitat for insects by breaking down deadwood and debris in forests. While fungal species are increasingly threatened by human activities such as land use change, nitrogen leaching and pollution,...

93. Why are some birds more window collision-prone than others?

David Tan (iDiv)

Complexity

Poster

Although more than 1,800 bird species worldwide are known to collide with windows, some species appear to be more susceptible to collisions than others. These “super-colliders” are distributed across the bird tree of life, but tend to cluster within a small subset of families such as Pigeons, Wood Warblers, Pittas, and New World Sparrows. To better understand why some species are more...

125. Why is it important to understand how differently various organisms hear?

Dr Reinhard Klenke (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Institut für Biologie, Geobotanik und Botanischer Garten)

Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governance

Talk

Noise pollution is an often-overlooked but significant factor contributing to the loss of biodiversity. It disrupts many biological processes, for example by increasing the energy required for communication, masking signals that are important for mating or warning, driving individuals away from feeding grounds, disrupting orientation, temporarily impairing hearing, or even causing damage to...

3. You ask iAnswer: Mobilizing iDiv Data for the Public with a Question-Answering Interface for the PhenObs Knowledge Graph

Tarek Al Mustafa (iDiv)

Open Session

Talk

iDiv has amassed heaps of knowledge – hidden in publications, theses, and databases. In the iAnswer project we want to explore whether a combination of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Knowledge Graphs (KGs) can unveil this knowledge and make it accessible to scientists and the general public. In the first year of iAnswer, we collaborated with the team of the iDiv strategic project PhenObs to...