Conveners
Afternoon Sessions: Open Session
- Brigitte Braschler (iDiv and Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg)
- Aleksandra Pienkowska (German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Leipzig, Germany; Department of Physiological Diversity, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research โ UFZ, Leipzig, Germany)
Afternoon Sessions: Approaches
- Stefan Knauร
- Marius Munschek (iDiv)
Afternoon Sessions: Transdisciplinary
- Edit Hunyadi
- Gavin Stark (iDiv/MLU)
Afternoon Sessions: Biodiversity & Human Well-Being
- Louisa-Marie von Plรผskow
- Gemma Burgazzi (iDiv/UFZ)
Afternoon Sessions: Functions
- Qing-Fang Bi (Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry)
- Pia Loeffke (iDiv, EIE)
Afternoon Sessions: Complexity
- Robert Rauschkolb (Friedrich Schiller University, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP) Jena)
- Michael Gerth (German Centre of Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig & Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)
Afternoon Sessions: Transdisciplinary
- A. Cristina de la Vega-Leinert (BIOP - iDiv - UFZ)
- Gavin Stark (iDiv/MLU)
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Andrรฉs Mรกrmol-Guijarro (Martin Luther Universitรคt Halle-Wittemberg)08/09/2026, 15:00Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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)โ a set of plausible, positive futures for people and nature โ to explore the combined effects of human and climate pressures across terrestrial, freshwater and...
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Hao Luo (Leipzig University)08/09/2026, 15:00Open SessionTalk
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.
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The first part examines the... -
Roel van Klink (MLU)08/09/2026, 15:00Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchTalk
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...
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chenhuan wu08/09/2026, 15:15Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchTalk
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...
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Christopher Wild (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Naturkundemuseum Erfurt)08/09/2026, 15:15Open SessionTalk
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...
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Jeremy Dertien (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany)08/09/2026, 15:15Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Ladislav Hodac (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry)08/09/2026, 15:30Approaches of integrative biodiversity researchTalk
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...
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60. Small bodied mammals show more constraint in their jaw ecomorphologies than large bodied mammalsGemma Benevento (iDiv)08/09/2026, 15:30Open SessionTalk
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 mammalโs ecological niche,...
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Jose Valdez (idiv)08/09/2026, 15:30Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Bernardo Daniel Caรฑiza Ovelar (Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function at Friedrich Schiller University Jena Herbarium Haussknecht (JE))08/09/2026, 15:45Open SessionTalk
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 Eszterhรกzy University in Eger, Hungary, as well as duplicates and original...
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Joรฃo de Deus Vidal Junior (Leipzig University, LeipzigLab, Leipzig)08/09/2026, 15:45Biodiversity and Human Well-BeingTalk
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...
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Jori Maylin Marx (UFZ)08/09/2026, 15:45Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Lina Estupinan Suarez08/09/2026, 16:00Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Mr Richard Vรถlker (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)08/09/2026, 16:00Biodiversity and Human Well-BeingTalk
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...
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Erin Wessling (iDiv)08/09/2026, 16:00Open SessionTalk
Although biodiversity is widely acknowledged as worth conserving, conservation science has long grappled with what, exactly, that diversity comprises and which components should be prioritized. Diversity, by definition, is an aggregate of multiple smaller entities or units, yet those units can be defined in many ways. Are species or populations the relevant building blocks of biodiversity?...
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Jan Kalusche (German Centre for Integrative Biodaiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv), Helmholtz Centre for environmental research (UFZ))08/09/2026, 16:15Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Kevin Rozario (UFZ / iDiv / Uni Jena / Uni Leipzig)08/09/2026, 16:15Biodiversity and Human Well-BeingTalk
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.
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To test this, 52 participants between 18 and 35 years of age underwent four... -
Tarek Al Mustafa (iDiv)08/09/2026, 16:15Open SessionTalk
iDiv has amassed heaps of knowledge โ 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...
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Louisa-Marie von Plรผskow09/09/2026, 14:30Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
Small streams make up a large part of the river network in Germany and perform a variety of important ecosystem services, such as contributing to the preservation of biological diversity, water storage, and climate and flood regulation. Despite their great ecological importance, they have not been adequately covered by official monitoring to date and are mostly in poor ecological condition....
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Omer Nevo (iDiv)09/09/2026, 14:30FunctionsTalk
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...
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Huan Liang (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv))09/09/2026, 14:30ComplexityTalk
Urbanization reshapes biodiversity, yet how it interacts with spatiotemporal gradients to reorganize species interactions โ and how these interactions respond to multiple socio-ecological drivers โ remains poorly understood. Here we analyzed plantโpollinator interaction networks across 22 urban green spaces sampled year-round along an urbanization gradient in an underrepresented Asian...
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Dr Gemma Burgazzi (UFZ/iDiv)09/09/2026, 14:45Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
Despite covering less than 1% of the Earthโs 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...
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Sun Zhang09/09/2026, 14:45ComplexityTalk
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...
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Ding-Jie Wang09/09/2026, 14:45FunctionsTalk
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...
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Stefanie Henkel (Biodiversity and People)09/09/2026, 15:00Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Marie Ende (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)09/09/2026, 15:00ComplexityTalk
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...
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Dr Ioannis Kampouris (Applied Microbial Ecology, iDiv)09/09/2026, 15:00FunctionsTalk
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...
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David Tan (iDiv)09/09/2026, 15:15Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Liping Wei (Friedrich Schiller University Jena)09/09/2026, 15:15ComplexityTalk
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...
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Marie Englert (Universitรคt Leipzig)09/09/2026, 15:15FunctionsTalk
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 EUโs most extensive protected area networks, but a notable proportion predates systematic conservation planning and...
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Gunnar Brehm09/09/2026, 15:30Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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....
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Zachary Hajian-Forooshani (iDiv)09/09/2026, 15:30ComplexityTalk
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...
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Miguel Mahecha (Leipzig University)09/09/2026, 15:30FunctionsTalk
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...
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Susanne Tautenhahn (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena)09/09/2026, 15:45FunctionsTalk
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,...
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Mr Christian Langer (iDiv / Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)09/09/2026, 15:45Transdisciplinarity for biodiversity science and governanceTalk
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...
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Minghua Shen09/09/2026, 15:45ComplexityTalk
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...
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