Benjamin Wildermuth

In a @sceneuog.bsky.social research group meeting led by students discussing research funding. Does anyone have a link to databases/websites detailing small grant funding for ecological research?

Stellenangebote: Universität Hohenheim Aktuelle Stellenangebote der Universität Hohenheim.

JOB ALERT! Do you also love large ecological experiments? Become coordinator of our big new geo-biosphere experiment in @terra-cluster.org. 7-year position! Follow link for details.
@gfoesoc.bsky.social
@britishecologicalsociety.org
@ecologicalsociety.bsky.social
@uslter.bsky.social

Please repost!

Drought and insects have killed an unprecedented number of Oregon’s Douglas fir trees during the last decade, costing billions in timber value, damaging infrastructure and ramping up wildfire danger.

What is Douglas fir dieback? Where is it happening? What is being done? tinyurl.com/5n9amvx6

Join — Sydney Functional Ecology

Excited to share a PhD opportunity in my upcoming lab at The University of Sydney!
Join an ARC-funded project on the ecology of ant invasions in 2026 🐜
🇦🇺 Live in Sydney, ant around Australia
🌍 Intl + Domestic applicants welcome
markwongecology.com/join
#PhD #Ecology #Biodiversity
Pls share, thx 🙏

The Imbalance of Nature: The Role of Species Environmental Responses for Community Stability This study shows that the distribution of species' fundamental responses to environmental change, quantified by a new metric, imbalance, is a key driver of ecological stability. In a large microcosm ...

New paper out in Ecology Letters!
“The Imbalance of Nature: The Role of Species Environmental Responses for Community Stability”
📖 Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We tried to answer the question: What drives community stability in fluctuating environments?

Habitat and land‐use intensity shape moth community structure across temperate forest and grassland This study reveals how land-use intensity, plant diversity, weather and artificial light interact to shape moth diversity across forests and grasslands. Using 300 plots across Germany, we highlight h...

🌿🦋 Interested in how #land-use intensity shapes #moth communities? Check out this BE-paper in @animalecology.bsky.social
🌳 #Forests host higher abundance & diversity than grasslands. 🌡️Temperature is a key factor. It's all a complex interplay of habitat , LUI and weather.
🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365... 🌐

Bridging the gap between individual specialization and species persistence in mutualistic communities Mutualistic interactions among organisms are fundamental to the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. Yet, the study of community dynamics often relies on values averaged at the species level, igno...

What sustains biodiversity? 🌿🌸🐝🐦‍⬛ It’s not just about species, it’s also about individuals.
 
Our new paper in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecol. Monogr. shows how the way individuals specialize on their mutualistic partners can scale up to shape species persistence.
 
🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

🛢️Long-range pollen transport across the North Sea: Insights from migratory hoverflies landing on a remote oil rig ➡️ buff.ly/C6Jp8UK

Quantifying the influence of intraspecific variability in trait spaces - npj Biodiversity npj Biodiversity - Quantifying the influence of intraspecific variability in trait spaces

Working with individual trait data and functional trait spaces and bored about means?

With @cpcarmona.bsky.social, Agnese Bissi and @etordoni.bsky.social, we put together a perspective to test the effect of individual observations on trait space properties 👇👇

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Haha, yeah, I think I'm also more used to low levels of interaction, posts with like 10 likes feel kind of viral :D

Fair enough, but I'd suspect that you underestimate your reach here :)
Anyway, people, don't be greedy with your likes, Bartosz is not the first one I hear from who is shifting more focus to Linkedin due to the ongoing interaction desertification here.

The ex Twitter bubble indeed seems to be fragmented among the two, but in my experience there is a strong complementation. I prefer Bsky because it's more content-oriented and less big bla bla look at me and everyone comments "congrats professor" who doesn't even relate to the topic.

Contrasting trait-based assembly mechanisms on different trophic levels: ants and plants on wood-pastures - Oecologia Complex landscapes (i.e., those harboring multiple habitat types at immediate spatial proximity) are highly relevant to both applied and theoretical ecological research, yet the mechanisms shaping functional trait distributions and diversity metrics across trophic levels in these systems remain poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we used wood-pastures as a model system and focused on two prominent groups occupying different trophic levels: plants and ants. We sampled three Central-European wood-pastures, with all four encompassed habitat types (grasslands, solitary trees, forest edges, and forests; 48 sites in total). Our results revealed significant differences in taxonomic and functional composition for both groups among the different habitat types of wood-pastures. However, the underlying mechanisms driving these patterns differed between plants and ants. Based on RLQ and fourth-corner analyses, heterogeneity in environmental conditions mainly influenced plant functional trait distributions. In contrast, ant diversity metrics and trait distributions were strongly linked to vegetation characteristics and habitat structure, and were only indirectly influenced by local microclimate, as shown by path analyses. These highlight that while mapping the increased environmental heterogeneity of complex landscapes, the main mechanisms shaping functional composition and diversity metrics might differ for organisms at different trophic levels (i.e., predominantly environmental filtering for plants and interspecific competition for ants). Consequently, the patterns and peaks of taxonomic and functional diversity do not necessarily coincide for different organisms in complex landscapes, emphasizing that conservation initiatives should focus on the system as a whole, rather than individual habitat types, to maximize biodiversity conservation.

Complex landscapes host diverse life, but not all organisms respond identicall!
In wood-pastures, plants are filtered by the environment, while ants by vegetation and habitat structure.🌿🐜
Conservation must target the whole system.
New paper by our collegaues⤵️:

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📢Check out our latest BE-publication on #invertebrate 🐞abundance in #grasslands 🌱 published in @basicapplecol.bsky.social.

Reducing land use (single late #mowing) increased #insects by +41% after 1 yr and +99% after 3 yrs.
Species diversity, however, remained unchanged.

🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.ba...

How do insects respond to changing climates? Our new review and analysis in @annualreviews.bsky.social suggests that phenological adaptation trumps thermal adaptation.

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Genomic divergence across the tree of life | PNAS Nucleotide sequence data are being harnessed to identify species, even in cases in which organisms themselves are neither in hand nor witnessed. Bu...

Genomic divergence across the tree of life 🧪🌐https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319389122

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Find our new job opportunities at www.terra-cluster.org! We're building up our #TERRA team for the next years!
You are a Bioinformatician, or a Geoscientific Laboratory Researcher? You are looking for a Postdoctoral Project with Interdisciplinary Synthesis and Publication Coordination? Join!

#Publication: The article, co-authored by @rihomarja.bsky.social and led by Elisabeth Prangel, has been published in the Global Change Biology under the title "Grassland restoration drives strong multitrophic biodiversity recovery, but climate extremes jeopardize drought-sensitive species."

Dutch solar parks approach pollinator & plant biodiversity levels of extensive grasslands, but only on the surface not covered by panels. Soil-emergent arthropods and butterflies lack behind. Proud of Timea for leading besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@jappliedecology.bsky.social

🌳Habitat and land-use intensity shape moth community structure across temperate forest and grassland ➡️ buff.ly/YRXzRmV

This study reveals how land-use intensity, plant diversity, weather, and artificial light interact to shape moth diversity across forests and grasslands.

⚡️Doctoral Researchers, be quick!

📢10 doctoral researcher positions are open at the University Freiburg for research on FORSCALE "Scaling Effects in the Adaptation of Forests to Climate Change"

🚨Closing: 29 Sept 2025🚨

🔗 www.iufro.org/position-ann...

#ForestScience #ForestResearch #ClimateChange

One thing I always try to do as a reviewer/editor when recommending a change is to think about whether or not the resulting improvement to the paper/software justifies the amount of time I think it will take the author to address it. The bigger the ask, the greater the need in order to justify it.

It seems that everything i know about fungi is wrong

Ecological synthesis including forest ecosystems, grassland, land use, climate change, time series, stability, ecosystem functioning, biodiversity, species interaction networks

Three exciting #PostDoc 🧑‍🔬👩‍🔬🧕 positions on #Ecological #Synthesis at TU Darmstadt @tuda.bsky.social for Reassembly #rainforest 🇪🇨 🌱🌴🦜 & #Biodiversity Exploratories 🌲🐄🚜🪲🐝🥀@bexplo.bsky.social
Please spread widely ✉️♥️▶️ & apply quickly 🙃
www.reassembly.de/the-team/job...

Does anyone know of an expert in #Austism studying adolescents that reject family moves to a new country? We are looking for advice and help. Please resend etc.

On watching logs rot 🫠

Not specific to studies, but commonly used for new anything: Anfangseuphorie

The second talk is by me, tune in on Tuesday 10:30 🙃

Never a fan of braggy advertising in academia, often ruins Bsky posts too