@terrecolgroup
We are the Terrestrial Ecology Research Group at TU Munich in Freising - headed by Wolfgang Weisser. We investigate patterns and drivers of biodiversity change in agricultural, natural and urban ecosystems.
NEW PAPER: We recently published a Comment in npj Sustainable Agriculture, in which we argue that future agricultural scenarios adopting Smart Farming should integrate biodiversity targets in order to gain any biodiversity benefits, as these are not a guarantee. rdcu.be/e6zB7
This morning Alexandra presented the results of her MSc thesis, which included insect sampling on our green roof experiments in Munich. She nicely showed how substrate depth has taxon-specific effects on arthropods occurring in roof plots, while structural elements had rather minimal impact.
Reeds were sawed to length and sorted by diameter
Freshly sawed reeds, with ongoing sawing in the back, and Zoé sanding her reeds on the right
Solitary bee nests completed. A large mesh grid will be placed to protect against bird predation
Over the past few weeks, Zoé Hentschel has been very busy preparing for field season 2026; as a part of this, she prepared solitary bee nests to study bee nesting activity and parasitism in urban settings. Lots of reed, dust, noise and help from colleagues - but the final product looks solid!
This week Xia Yao presented some of her PhD work on how land ownership types differ in their green spaces in terms of green space and volume. These differences are often overlooked, but private and public lands are often managed and distributed quite differently!
We usually advertise available funded PhD positions on our website, www.lss.ls.tum.de/en/toek/home/. If you have specific interest in a subject from one of our team members, I recommend reaching out to them personally with specific ideas; that ensures the most direct line of communication.
Our colleague, Prof. Sebastian Meyer recently took part in the 'Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte' #APuZ podcast where he discussed the complexities of biodiversity loss, and the consequences for natural systems and for humans.
www.bpb.de/mediathek/po...
A few more days left to apply for our postdoc position on insect community ecology.
Tuesday, we heard a very nice update on Laura Windorfer's work. She is modeling plant communities on variable building envelopes, in order to provide architects opportunities to select designs that are optimized for human- and biodiversity-oriented key performance indicators. Lovely results, Laura!
Last week, Marlene Graf shared a story on how she used insect metabarcoding approaches to investigate the effects of mixing Douglas fir with native tree species on native insect communities. This story is part of her PhD in which she investigates broader biodiversity impacts of admixture.
We are currently looking for a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in community ecology to work in the Arthropods Core Project of the Biodiversity Exploratories @bexplo.bsky.social
Reposting is much appreciated for widest reach! Thanks.
More information here:
www.lss.ls.tum.de/fileadmin/w0...
We are currently looking for a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in community ecology to work in the Arthropods Core Project of the Biodiversity Exploratories @bexplo.bsky.social
Reposting is much appreciated for widest reach! Thanks.
More information here:
www.lss.ls.tum.de/fileadmin/w0...
As the year comes to an end, it was time for Christmas celebrations in our research group today. It was a full house, with many of our colleagues, Feuerzangenbowle, quiz games and Wolfgang Weisser in a Santa suit. What else do you need? Happy holidays everyone!
New paper out in @science.org from the LegacyNet. Functional plant diversity and fertilization impacts on yields were compared in a network of sites across the globe. Our colleague Sebastian Meyer hosted the Freising site, allowing us to follow it closely for many years.
doi.org/10.1126/scie...
Attached a graphical depiction of the results with yield as a function of daily temperature. Circles indicate the diverse mixtures, and triangles the monocultures. Note that differences increase towards the warmer end of the figure.
These findings not only confirm the results of many years of biodiversity experiments, but they show a very strong potential application of biodiversity in agricultural settings that is often overlooked, in the ley phase.
The paper clearly shows that the benefits of functionally diverse ley phases are larger than those of fertilizer inputs. The diverse climatic range of the host sites also revealed that diversity effects are stronger in areas with higher mean temperatures.
New paper out in @science.org from the LegacyNet. Functional plant diversity and fertilization impacts on yields were compared in a network of sites across the globe. Our colleague Sebastian Meyer hosted the Freising site, allowing us to follow it closely for many years.
doi.org/10.1126/scie...
This week, Anna and Sven from our Hainich @bexplo.bsky.social team showed selected results from almost twenty years of Biodiversity Exploratories. Obviously, discussing all that was done in this time is impossible, but it is clear that the project taught us a lot through the years! Thanks to all!
New study by @bmwildermuth.bsky.social et al. in @natecoevo.nature.com
They asked whether arthropod biomass declines due to species loss per se, or which species are lost, or because of shrinking abundances of persisting species. 🪲🕷️🐝🦗
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
We are looking forward to seeing many participants in the BE20 conference, marking the twentieth anniversary of the @bexplo.bsky.social Biodiversity Exploratories, which have a special place in our hearts and research group.
Hope to see you in June '26!
Lisa and Meret recently had a nice interview with the Copernicus Agency about their recent paper (see quoted post). This is interesting work for anyone interested in spatial modelling and urban biodiversity.
A summary of the interview can be found here: land.copernicus.eu/en/use-cases...
Congratulations to Dr. Sven Rubanschi, who successfully defended his PhD today in a public defense. Sven used distribution modeling approaches to map biotopes in Bavaria to highlight conservation and restoration potential, incl. under different climate scenarios.
For his MSc, Frederik Achterberg investigated how weather (precipitation events, temperature, wind speed) affects the visitation of arthropods on arthropod camera traps placed in the field. Weather clearly has an impact, but not always as expected, with complex temporal and taxon-specific effects.
Robert Künast is using AI Camera traps to monitor insect diversity in grasslands for his PhD. This morning, he shared his results in which he used trap visitation data (thousands of pics) to study how insect activity behaves under different mowing conditions. (Mowing = Not Great for most insects)
An interesting example of one of the system she has worked on involving Solenopsis ants and the invasive coffee borer in the Colombian coffee plantations; filmed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKff...
We are happy that Prof. Inge Ambrecht from Universidad del Valle in Colombia is visiting us this week. In her seminar, she shared insights from 30 years of working on ant and insect ecology, and discusses their close relevance to agroecological systems, and what we can do to improve these systems.
Plant-Insect-interactions & the chemistry behind it - I‘m happy that the 3rd chapter of the PhD thesis of #HumayNevrzella became online as pre-print. Again a great cooperation with @robinheinennl.bsky.social and @terrecolgroup.bsky.social
#Plantscience
This morning Lisa Merkens summarized the highlights of her PhD in a short and dense talk, showing how we can use bird ecology, observations and city plans to study and model habitat connectivity and importantly, how to use this to improve cities for biodiversity.
A very good end of the day today with the defense of @afairbairn.bsky.social, who was awarded his doctoral title summa cum laude. With excellent contributions to the field of urban biodiversity monitoring, crowned by a great public talk and defense. Congratulations, Dr. Fairbairn!