Oksana Buzhdygan

Quantifying functionally equivalent species and ecological network dissimilarity with optimal transport distances Quantifying the structure and dynamics of species interactions in ecological communities is fundamental to studying ecology and evolution. While there are numerous approaches to analysing ecologic...

Quantifying similarity among ecological network is getting feasible to understand assembly processes from communities to species interactions. Upcoming publication using this for African mammal food webs is under revision now. Stay tuned!

#Ecology #EcologicalNetwork #Macroecology #Biogeography

A screenshot of a webpage making a call for papers announcement for a special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Zoology, focussed on soil and litter invertebrates. The page has a banner image photograph of a globular springtail facing towards the camera, with its head down, feeding on fungi on a decaying log.

Are you researching the conservation, ecology or taxonomy of soil & litter invertebrates?

Submit your paper to this Special Issue of NZ Journal of Zoology, edited by me, @carlosbarreto.bsky.social & @barnesecodiv.bsky.social!

More info: www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/nzjz-so...

#SoilBiodiversity 🧪

Last day of our Quantitative Plant Ecology in magnificent grasslands in #Gülpe Havelaue. Looking forward to be back next year #ÖkologischeStationGülpe with Felix May, @dariiaborovyk.bsky.social & our great students
‪ @fubcp.bsky.social, @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social

#Gülpe has so many amazing spots and paths and even more plants and insects :) (The only thing better is going to be the Borscht on Saturday) @oksanabuzh.bsky.social @dariiaborovyk.bsky.social

Honored to receive the Best Paper Award from @jpecol.bsky.social 🏆

Our paper shows that multitrophic biodiversity enhances ecosystem functions, services, and ecological intensification in agriculture.

Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/jpe/...

Enjoying fieldwork in beautiful #Gülpe Havelaue, despite the rain 🌧️

Sampling nested plot series at multiple scales in dry grasslands 🌾 #GrassPlot #EDGG

Geat teamwork with @dariiaborovyk.bsky.social & @charly-gha.bsky.social

#FieldEcology #GrasslandScience

‪with @selina-b.bsky.social, @brittatietjen.bsky.social, ‬ #BlühenderCampus of #FUBerlin, ‪ @fubcp.bsky.social, @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social

A trait-based model to describe plant community dynamics in managed grasslands (GrasslandTraitSim.jl v1.0.0) Abstract. Temperate semi-natural grassland plant communities are expected to shift under global change, mainly due to land use and climate change. However, the interaction of different drivers on…

A trait-based model to describe plant community dynamics in managed #grasslands (GrasslandTraitSim.jl v1.0.0)
by Felix Nößler, Thibault Moulin, Oksana Buzhdygan, Britta Tietjen, and Felix May doi.org/pfrn via @EgUsphere
#PlantScience

Still glowing 5 days after Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften #lndw25 ✨

🌿 Identifying plants
🐾 Matching mammal fingerprints
💻 Playing with computer models
✔️ Guessing plant diversity
🦊 Exploring animal habitats at game tables

It was a blast – thanks for the curiosity and great conversations! 🧠🌼

Interested in #ecological #theory & live on this side of the world (Asia-Pacific)? Tune in to the @pop-bio.bsky.social seminar series! I'm speaking next on #biodiversity change, #food-web energetics and #ecosystem function. Register here: forms.gle/7vEiUQKJqeUL... 🌐🌏🍁🧪 @newzealandecology.bsky.social

Paper out in Biological Conservation 🎉

Traditional management maintains species-rich grassland 🌼

▶️19% plant species dispersed via livestock feces💩
▶️Grassland cleaning🧹 boosts diversity
▶️Low-intensity grazing🐄 & manuring💩 shape plant composition without reducing diversity 👩‍🌾
doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Figure 1 from our paper showing biological differences in life-history traits (bold text) across above- and belowground compartments for pathogenic and herbivorous consumer groups. some consumers (i.e., leaf miners and parasitic nematodes) exhibit traits that span both categories. The bold text for pathogens reads: "span a wider taxonomic breadth (viruses, bacteria, and multi-cellular eukaryotes), limited host choice, may require vectors, fast reproduction". The text for herbivores reads: "span a narrower taxonomic breadth (restricted to animals), consumed by predators, movement, range in body size, host choice."

Pathogens and herbivores differ in key life history characteristics, and we expected that these might drive differences in terminology, patterns, and hypotheses in the published literature.

PhD position - Resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across landscapes

Two PhD positions available at Wageningen University on resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across landscapes. Supervision will be by my great colleagues @iris-hordijk.bsky.social @amandataylor.bsky.social @dominic-martin.bsky.social @lucianachr.bsky.social and Merel Hofmeijer.

Trade‐offs among restored ecosystem functions are context‐dependent in Mediterranean‐type regions Global biodiversity hotspots, including Mediterranean-type ecosystems worldwide, are highly threatened by global change that alters biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and services. Some restoration a....

🚨Paper in @ecography.bsky.social led by @sbfiedler.de
One-size-fits-all doesn't work in restoration! Trade-offs between carbon gain, water use & nitrogen use shift with abiotic context in Mediterranean-type ecosystems. Match plant traits to place! nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The need for an individual-based global change ecology Biodiversity loss and widespread ecosystem degradation are among the most pressing challenges of our time, requiring urgent action. Yet our understanding of their causes remains limited because prevai...

Paper just out:

Jeltsch et al.

The need for an individual-based global change ecology ibe.pensoft.net/articles.php...

Lets the sampling begin 🎉
Start of sampling in the #BlühenderCampus of the @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social to assess the effects of management intensity on biodiversity 🌼🐛🐞🐿️ & functioning ♻️ of campus green spaces. Stay tuned for more 😉

by @dariiaborovyk.bsky.social

Ich fühle mich auf jeden Fall seit 2017 wie eine Schallplatte mit Sprung: Qualität in der Standardisierung ist das Wichtigste, weil biologische Vielfalt sehr komplex ist…

Reiht sich gut ein in den Artikel von @christianschwaegerl.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy letztens

www.faz.net/aktuell/wiss...

Here we share the press release on our paper and how our collaboration in #iDiv | #sDiv helped reunite Ukrainian scholars scattered across Europe www.idiv.de/grassland-bi...
with @anyameadow.bsky.social, @dariiaborovyk.bsky.social, and #sCaleGrassDiv group

The figure explaining the contrasting outcomes for diversity and local and landscape scales in continuous vs. fragmented landscapes. The right column (panel d) shows the cases where increasing inter-fragment diversity (increasing beta diversity among fragments) compensates for loss of local (alpha) diversity results in an increase in regional (Gamma) diversity. Fragmentation is 'bad' for diversity when loss of alpha and beta diversity combine to cause landscape-wide declines in gamma diversity.

New key finding:
Landscapes of fragmented habitat have lower diversity, at all scales, than do unfragmented landscapes.

Habitat fragmentation does not compensate for the loss of local (alpha) diversity by increasing the diversity among fragments (beta diversity).
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The mechanisms underlying the effects of the study environmental drivers on local diversity at small (10 m2 plots) and larger (100 m2 plots) fine-grain sizes (a) and on β-diversity—the scaling factor among the two scales (b). https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70941

The effects of different drivers and their scale-dependency operated through different mechanisms:

Scale-dependent effects of environmental drivers on species richness and evenness at small (10 m2) and larger (100 m2) fine-grain plots. Points show the standardized effect sizes of each environmental driver (marked by colors of points) on the diversity measures at 10 m2 scale (x-axis) compared to 100 m2 (y-axis). The solid gray line indicates the 1: 1 line expected if effect sizes were not scale-dependent. Points above and below this line indicate effect sizes that are larger or smaller, respectively, as grain size increases. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70941

We investigated how climate, soil properties, abiotic disturbance, and land use influence plant diversity across two fine grain sizes (10 vs 100 m2) in various grassland types in Ukraine. The strength of most of the effects of these drivers varied between spatial scales, affecting β-diversity.

Paper out in Ecology and Evolution @ecol-evol.bsky.social

Scale-Dependent Effects of Plant Diversity Drivers Across Different Grassland Habitats in Ukraine doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

result of #sDiv synthesis working #sCaleGrassDiv in @iDiv www.idiv.de/research/sdi...

Scale‐Dependent Effects of Plant Diversity Drivers Across Different Grassland Habitats in Ukraine Our findings support the idea that the responses of biodiversity to climate, soil factors, and litter depend on the size of the sampled area. We have identified main mechanisms behind the scale-depen...

We have published our first article based on the results of the sCaleGrassDiv project supported by The German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Legumes strengthened the top-down control of primary consumers. Biomass stocks and energy flows were responsive to different biodiversity facets. Targeted grassland management would profit from focusing on specific plant diversity facets depending on the ecosystem function or service of interest.

Plant diversity effects on energy flows (shown by arrows) and standing stocks (shown by circles) across trophic network. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.70004

We showed that plant diversity constrains consumer functioning by means other than only altered consumer biomass. The effects of plant species richness across the food web attenuated with higher trophic levels and often operated through mechanisms of plant functional-trait diversity.

Grouping of trophic compartments, their biomass stocks (shown by circles), and energy flows among them (shown by arrows) into trophic groups, ecosystem functions, trophic levels, and aboveground (AG) versus belowground (BG) subnetworks. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.70004

Paper is out in Ecological Monographs @esajournals.bsky.social

Plant diversity facets differentially affect energy dynamics in grasslands depending on trophic contexts doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

Research in @jena-experiment.bsky.social

New research in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecological Monographs led by @oksanabuzh.bsky.social

Different facets of plant diversity differentially affect energy dynamics across trophic levels and below- or aboveground compartements. 🌱🍃🪲🪱

doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

It was such a great week, thanks everyone ##BEassembly2025 #Biodiversityexploratories 🎉
Looking forward to ##BEassembly2026

How to Interpret Statistical Models Using marginaleffects for R and Python by Vincent Arel-Bundock, Noah Greifer, Andrew Heiss <p>The parameters of a statistical model can sometimes be difficult to interpret substantively, especially when that model includes nonlinear components, interactions, or transformations. Analysts who...

Imagine finding out @vincentab.bsky.social @noahgreifer.bsky.social and @andrew.heiss.phd wrote a thing and it's open access 👀

Awesome paper about {marginaleffects} R/python packages in JOSS (which needs to join Bsky)

www.jstatsoft.org/article/view...