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Bogusz Bujnowski (iDiv Physiological Diversity)08/09/2026, 13:25Biodiversity and Human Well-BeingPoster
Allergic diseases represent a significant global health concern, with the prevalence of allergic rhinitis estimated at approximately 10โ30% 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).
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Air quality monitoring, particularly with a focus on pollen loads, is currently... -
Marie Meemken (Uni Jena)08/09/2026, 13:26Biodiversity and Human Well-BeingPoster
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 โ yet the large majority of existing studies...
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Lina von Wedel (UFZ/iDiv)08/09/2026, 13:27Biodiversity and Human Well-BeingPoster
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....
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Dr Clara Arboleda-Baena (Department of Applied Microbial Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, 04318, Germany)08/09/2026, 13:28Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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...
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Julia Simonis (Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP))08/09/2026, 13:29Open SessionPoster
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...
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Michael Rzanny (Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena)08/09/2026, 13:30Open SessionPoster
Citizen Science data are widely used in ecological research. Yet, the term โCitizen Science dataโ is often applied as a broad label that overlooks the vast diversity of how such data are collected.
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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... -
Maya Heyland08/09/2026, 13:31Biodiversity and Human Well-BeingPoster
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...
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Nadine Mรถbius (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv))08/09/2026, 13:32Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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.
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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... -
Lu Wang (UFZ Leipzig)08/09/2026, 13:33Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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...
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Zarah Janda08/09/2026, 13:34FunctionsPoster
Understanding how plant diversity shapes soil ecosystem functioning over time is a central challenge in biodiversityโecosystem 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...
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Sophie Moreau (Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena)08/09/2026, 13:35Open SessionPoster
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...
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Susanne Dunker (UFZ, iDiv (PHYDIV))08/09/2026, 13:36Open SessionPoster
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...
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Menahil Fatima (iDiv / Friedrich Schiller University Jena)08/09/2026, 13:50Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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...
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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)08/09/2026, 13:55Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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...
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Anna Vincze08/09/2026, 14:00ComplexityPoster
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...
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Miriam Simon08/09/2026, 14:05ComplexityPoster
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...
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18. Microbial predators under pressure: soil protist community shifts under long-term fertilization.Nicola Schilling (Applied Microbial Ecology, UfZ Leipzig, yDiv)08/09/2026, 14:10FunctionsPoster
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,...
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Dr Riffat Rahim (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig โ iDiv , Johannisallee 19a 04103 Leipzig)08/09/2026, 14:15ComplexityPoster
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...
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Wenhui Liu (Leipzig Institute for Meteorology)08/09/2026, 14:20ComplexityPoster
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...
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Josephine Ulrich (Friedrich Schiller University, Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP) Jena)08/09/2026, 14:25FunctionsPoster
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...
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Dr Olga Ferlian (iDiv)08/09/2026, 14:30FunctionsPoster
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...
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Tereza Maskova08/09/2026, 14:35FunctionsPoster
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,...
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Ferdinand Krause (Universitรคt Leipzig)08/09/2026, 14:40FunctionsPoster
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...
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Greta Stรถrkmann (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)08/09/2026, 14:45FunctionsPoster
The Klosterlausnitz mire is the largest peatland in eastern Thuringia. The project area is part of the โSรผmpfe und Wรคlder bei Bad Klosterlausnitzโ 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...
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Ioannis Constantinou (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig / University of Leipzig)08/09/2026, 14:50FunctionsPoster
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...
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Brigitte Braschler (iDiv and Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg)09/09/2026, 13:00Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governancePoster
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.
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The contracted term for the ETC BE ends this year and the wider European Topic... -
Diane Cooke (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry)09/09/2026, 13:05Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governancePoster
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,...
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Dr Naama Teschner (Ben-Gurion University)09/09/2026, 13:10Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governancePoster
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...
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Christian Ickler09/09/2026, 13:15Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governancePoster
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...
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Dr Matthias Kรถrschens (Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP) Jena)09/09/2026, 13:20Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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...
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Dr Valentin ศtefan (iDiv & UFZ)09/09/2026, 13:25Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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...
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Maria Kostakou (UFZ Leipzig)09/09/2026, 13:30Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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,...
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Ludmilla Figueiredo (Friedrich-Schiller-Universitรคt Jena; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity - iDiv)09/09/2026, 13:35Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchPoster
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...
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Diana Morales Fonseca (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig)09/09/2026, 13:40ComplexityPoster
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...
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David Tan (iDiv)09/09/2026, 13:45ComplexityPoster
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 โsuper-collidersโ 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...
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Aaron Hagen Kauffeldt (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv), Friedrich Schiller University Jena)09/09/2026, 13:50ComplexityPoster
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...
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Andressa Cabral (Universitรคt Leipzig / iDiv)09/09/2026, 13:55ComplexityPoster
The unique environmental conditions of the Brazilian Campos Rupestres (CR), such as shallow nutrient-poor soils, high temperatures, intense solar radiation, water scarcity, and natural fire regimes, have likely driven the evolution of distinctive functional strategies, e.g., desiccation and fire tolerance in Velloziaceae species. Although the effects of climate change on mountain biodiversity...
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Jens Kattge (MPI-BGC)09/09/2026, 14:00FunctionsPoster
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...
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Hui Zhang (Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig โ iDiv)09/09/2026, 14:05FunctionsPoster
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....
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Dr Mengcheng Duan (Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences)09/09/2026, 14:10FunctionsPoster
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 flexibleโsuch as pectinโin leaf water relations remains elusive. Here, we investigate the linkages among 26 traits, including cell...
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Sophie Wolf (Leipzig University)09/09/2026, 14:11FunctionsPoster
The increasing availability of Earth observation (EO) and ecosystem flux time series has led to rapid growth in the use of โresilience metricsโ 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...
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Janet Mumo Mutuku (Leipzig University)09/09/2026, 14:12FunctionsPoster
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...
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Alban Sagouis09/09/2026, 14:13Open SessionPoster
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 โ separate package...
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Alke Voskamp (FSU)09/09/2026, 14:14Open SessionPoster
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...
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Claudia Wiesner (Leipzig University, iDiv)09/09/2026, 14:15Open SessionPoster
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...
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Ms Jinyu Zhao (School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China)09/09/2026, 14:16FunctionsPoster
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 QinghaiโTibetan Plateau, comparing yak-only grazing, Tibetan sheep-only grazing, three...
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Andrea Silva-Cala (Plant Biodiversity group. FSU Jena)09/09/2026, 14:17Open SessionPoster
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...
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Daniela Hoss (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research - iDiv)09/09/2026, 14:18Open SessionPoster
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...
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Wenting Wang (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig - iDiv)09/09/2026, 14:19FunctionsPoster
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...
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