Pablo Castro Sánchez-Bermejo

Open position as research associate in our Vegetation Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation group @leuphana.bsky.social. Limited to 1 year, but an ideal chance to gain teaching experience and develop independent research 🍃🌳🗻🌱. Apply until March 26. Details: tinyurl.com/yc6dnr8p

The greenness of the Earth’s terrestrial vegetation changes throughout the seasons. Researchers can calculate the global “green centre” and track its movement over several decades. They have observed a gradual shift towards the north-east. By Ida Flik. https://greenwave.earth/

🌍 The earth’s green is increasing and its centre is moving north-east. Vegetational shift to the north is even stronger in the southern summer – surprising new facet of #globalgreening 🌱 Published in PNAS

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Dentro de la tormenta más monstruosa: así disparó el cambio climático la dana de Valencia | Especial El estudio más completo sobre la vinculación del desastre de 2024 con el calentamiento muestra la urgente necesidad de prepararse para lluvias torrenciales nunca vistas en el Mediterráneo

🌧 En la era moderna no ha habido una tormenta más monstruosa en España que la dana de Valencia de octubre de 2024. Un estudio reciente explica cómo se vio intensificada por el cambio climático

Te contamos qué sucedió, paso a paso, desde el interior de la tormenta:

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Tras unas vacaciones de descanso y un inicio de año con mucho trabajo, volvemos a daros noticias. Hace un tiempo lanzamos una propuesta para incorporar nuevos Editores Asociados y... ¡Ya están dentro del equipo editorial! Enhorabuena a tod@s 🎉
revistaecosistemas.net/index.php/ec...

The surprisingly big health benefits of just a little exercise Nature - ‘Exercise snacks’ and other forms of everyday movement can greatly reduce the risk of heart disease and death.

How much exercise do you actually need?

go.nature.com/49Mi2ju

📣 PhD position at Leuphana University (Germany) 🌳🍃🪴
Join the DIVERSA project on climate change effects on forest ecosystems. Fieldwork, laser scanning, experiments & data analysis in an international ecology team.
Apply by 20 Feb 2026 👉https://tinyurl.com/3ac4fewx
#Ecology #Biodiversity #Traits

Peaks of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, central Spain ⛰️

I spent time back in my hometown during Christmas and found the motivation to make this map with some of my favourite peaks there

New paper by @castretis.bsky.social et al in @natcomms.nature.com - read more about it here: www.idiv.de/worlds-large...

Leuphana university (@leuphana.bsky.social) is featuring our work in the BEF-China experiment and explaining some of the recent results on their website
www.leuphana.de/en/instituti...

The last chapter from PhD thesis by Juri Felix (co-supervised with @philstevenson.bsky.social) is now out in @oikosjournal.bsky.social! The study explores the effects of tree species identity and spatial scale on tree diversity effects #TreeDivNet nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Leaf diversity in forests 🍃

Intraspecific and intraindividual trait variability decrease with tree richness in a subtropical tree biodiversity experiment - Nature Communications In forests, trait expression is influenced by tree-tree interactions. Castro Sánchez-Bermejo et al. show how phenotypic variability of tree species decreases with tree diversity and contributes import...

In trees, intraspecific and intraindividual leaf trait variability decrease along a gradient of tree species richness and are an important part of functional diversity in forest stands,
Our new paper is already out in @natcomms.nature.com

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Want to know more about it? 🧵

Ecological insights from three decades of forest biodiversity experiments Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Published online: 02 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s44358-025-00112-2Experiments manipulating tree species diversity and measuring effects on ecosystem function have been important tools for assessing how biodiverse forests can accumulate biomass, store carbon and help to meet climate goals. This Review summarizes key findings from global tree biodiversity experiments.

New online! Ecological insights from three decades of forest biodiversity experiments

Thanks Brian for sharing the paper! Indeed, it makes sense to me that in natural ecosystems, where species diversity changes along environmental gradients, you find that interesting pattern of intraspecific variability in response to species richness

Intraspecific and intraindividual trait variability decrease with tree richness in a subtropical tree biodiversity experiment - Nature Communications In forests, trait expression is influenced by tree-tree interactions. Castro Sánchez-Bermejo et al. show how phenotypic variability of tree species decreases with tree diversity and contributes import...

And check the paper here if you are intrigued about our study

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Understanding leaf variability within tree species Leaf diversity arises from differences among species, but also from differences within species and even within the same crown. In a recent study, we show how intraspecific and intraindividual trait va...

"Understanding leaf variability within tree species" 🍃🌿🍂

I wrote a "behind the paper" post talking about our recent paper in @natcomms.nature.com
communities.springernature.com/posts/unders...

Very happy to see my first PhD chapter being published 🤍
Take a look if you are interested in how tree species richness and mycorrhizal associations affect soil multifunctionality on a small scale 🌳🌳

Of course, this was only possible thanks to all who contributed to this
@cpcarmona.bsky.social @spatialgenetics.bsky.social @raqbenavides.bsky.social @lsachsenmaier.bsky.social Shan Li @xliu225.bsky.social and Sylvia Haider
@treedi.bsky.social @idiv-research.bsky.social @leuphana.bsky.social

Intraspecific and intraindividual trait variability decrease with tree richness in a subtropical tree biodiversity experiment - Nature Communications In forests, trait expression is influenced by tree-tree interactions. Castro Sánchez-Bermejo et al. show how phenotypic variability of tree species decreases with tree diversity and contributes import...

With this, we show how intraspecific and intraindividual trait variability decrease along a diversity gradient and contribute to the functional diversity of forest stands 🌲🍂🌳 🍃 🌲 But go to the paper if you want to know more

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

We found that the observed functional diversity is often higher than the null expectation. Each species and tree tend to find a different strategy within the community, thus maximizing forest functional diversity. This supports that trait variability is more than "phenotypic noise" within species

In our work, we also studied the importance of intraspecific and intraindividual variation for the functional diversity of forests. Using the TPD framework by Carmona et al. (doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...) and null models, we compared the observed functional diversity with scenarios of random variability

4) There is a decrease of intraindividual variability in spectral regions associated to pigments, probably due to varying light within the canopy.

Check the method by Li et al. to know more about how we used algorithms for facial segmentation to analyse the spectral data.
doi.org/10.1101/2023...

1) Intraspecific trait variability (🌳🌲) is high in monocultures, probably to avoid intraspecific competitive interactions.

2) Intraspecific variability decreases in mixtures, where species may benefit from a “niche packing” strategy

3) Intraindividual trait variability (🍃🍂) barely responded, BUT…

We sampled 4,572 leaves in 8 tree species growing along an experimental species richness gradient in the BEF-China experiment (bef-china.com) and used spectroscopy to predict 5 leaf traits closely related to leaf economy.
And… What did we find?

Trees adjust their phenotypic expression in response to tree-tree interactions, resulting in leaf variability within species (intraspecific) and within individuals (intraindividual) 🍂🍃
As diversity modulates tree interactions, we studied the patterns of trait variability along diversity gradients

Intraspecific and intraindividual trait variability decrease with tree richness in a subtropical tree biodiversity experiment - Nature Communications In forests, trait expression is influenced by tree-tree interactions. Castro Sánchez-Bermejo et al. show how phenotypic variability of tree species decreases with tree diversity and contributes import...

In trees, intraspecific and intraindividual leaf trait variability decrease along a gradient of tree species richness and are an important part of functional diversity in forest stands,
Our new paper is already out in @natcomms.nature.com

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Want to know more about it? 🧵

Average political lean is negatively associated with average news quality of news shared across platforms.

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms.” Explore the article here: https://ow.ly/CzKQ50XsRs5

For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/ERge50XsRs6.

Hydro‐Functional Traits and Their Dissimilarity to the Neighbourhood Buffer Tree Growth Against the 2018–2020 Central European Drought Climate change is putting forests at risk. Our research shows that a tree's water-use strategy largely determines its growth across years: whereas one strategy performs better in normal years, the ot....

Over 2,600🌳 #trees during the 2018–2020 #drought :
• Traits disadvantageous in normal years became beneficial under drought
• Trees grew better with neighbours whose hydro-functional traits differed from their own
🗞️Paper out now @globalchangebio.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Diverse forests are more resistant to climate change

New study led by @lsachsenmaier.bsky.social @agwirthweigelt.bsky.social shows: forest stands made up of tree species with different water-use strategies (not just many species) grow better in drought years. #iDivResearch #Biodiversity
www.idiv.de/diverse-fore...