Benjamin Wildermuth

Our new paper on Contrasted effects of #human pressure on #Biodiversity using #airborne #eDNA is now published in @ecography.bsky.social
➡️ three human pressure indices increasing in complexity and scope
➡️ across 🦊🐦🦋🌿🍄

nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Arthropod species loss underpins biomass declines - Nature Ecology & Evolution Insects are declining in many regions. Here the authors show that arthropod biomass losses in Jena Experiment and Biodiversity Exploratories time series are driven more by species loss than by species...

One more piece of evidence, on a growing pile, that insects are in decline.

"...the general species turnover and biomass trends emphasize ongoing arthropod community simplification, and that even common species may be increasingly under threat."

🪲🪳🧪🌍

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A recovering patch of rainforest in Ecuadorian Chocó, picture by Eike Lena Neuschulz

Seed dispersal by 🦜🦇 underpins rainforest recovery. We want to understand more about its timing + traits driving recovery through obs, exp + genomic data. Ready to join the @reassemblynet.bsky.social team working in Ecuadorian Chocó? Pls apply to our 4-yr PhD position @sgn.one: tinyurl.com/2pkryc99

Insektensterben: Studie zeigt Hauptursache für Biomasse-Rückgang | MDR.DE Über 90 Prozent des Rückgangs der Insektenbiomasse in deutschen Grünlandflächen sind auf Artenverlust zurückzuführen. Das ist das zentrale Ergebnis einer neuen Studie, veröffentlicht in Nature Ecology...

Nette Zusamfassung (auch Audio) unserer aktuellen Forschung zum Insektensterben 🪲 vom MDR:

www.mdr.de/wissen/umwel...

Impacts of an industrial deep-sea mining trial on macrofaunal biodiversity - Nature Ecology & Evolution A species-level dataset of sediment-dwelling macrofauna, sampled 2 years before and 2 months after a test of a commercial deep-sea mining machine, reveals losses of macrofaunal density and species ric...

Much has been speculated on the impact of industrial deep-sea mining on marine ecosystems. This study led by @evastewart.bsky.social provides some direct empirical evidence.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Interested in the world under our feet and desperate to find cool and engaging reading material? Check out our Soil Biodiversity articles for kids, available in more than 30 languages: 🪱🌐
idiv-biodiversity.de/en/young-min...
HAPPY WORLD SOIL DAY
@uni-wuerzburg.de @idiv-research.bsky.social

Seedling growing in the forest

University of Birmingham, UK, are advertising a permanant position (Assistant or Associate Professor) in *Forests under Global Change*. A wide net has been cast - ecology, physiology, modelling, remote sensing, functioning, biodiversity, management... 🌲🌱🌳🌳🦌🌳🛰️🐿️🌲🔬🌳
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPS459/a...

Hi, for international researchers (broad topic of landscape resilience), you can get funded for organising a workshop at Uni Göttingen. Here is the link (see categroy C): #forestecol
www.uni-goettingen.de/de/innovatio...

Arthropod species loss underpins biomass declines - Nature Ecology & Evolution Insects are declining in many regions. Here the authors show that arthropod biomass losses in Jena Experiment and Biodiversity Exploratories time series are driven more by species loss than by species...

What are the mechanisms behind terrestrial arthropod declines? @bmwildermuth.bsky.social and colleagues have some answers

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@bexplo.bsky.social
@idiv-research.bsky.social
@jena-experiment.bsky.social

What is the effect of increasing disturbances in C European forests on insect diversity, and how does salvage logging modulate it? We found an overall positive response for both cleared and uncleared sites, with a stronger signal for taxonomic vs phylogenetic diversity doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Strong Changes in Soil Nutrient Stocks in Northern Forests Over Four Decades Northern forests are currently taking up large quantities of carbon due to tree growth. Yet, it is not known how the stocks of soil nutrients have responded to this increase in biomass. Therefore, we...

News from the tree nutrition front: despite all the nutrient input/output drama of the past decades, trees in Northern Europe seem to be doing fine, except they might still be missing some nitrogen.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@globalchangebio.bsky.social

Interested in considering the adaptive dynamics of ecological communities and their implications for facilitating, accepting, or resisting ecological change? We're looking for a postdoc to work with our partner Mark Vellend at @usherbrooke.bsky.social

➡️Find out more: csee-scee.ca/job/postdoc-...

Yes, the dynamics most likely depend on how diminished the communities already are. The smaller and more pressurised they are, species declines are likely synced with biomass loss regardless of location. But when communities are still big, compositional changes are still major factors.

Ha yeah, I run out of characters for sufficient nuance all the time and I do not like to write threads 😅

*yes, but the large-bodied species were mostly rare, contributing below-average total biomass to the communities. The initial biomass loss was therefore slightly lower than expected under the assumption of average biomass among lost species.
But yeah, now the communities are simplified

New study on arthropod declines @natecoevo.nature.com 🪲

In two time series @jena-experiment.bsky.social & @bexplo.bsky.social we show how community (dis)assembly underpins local biomass declines.

It mostly boils down to species loss, with identity losing relevance.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Distribution- (occupancy-) trend tells a different story than the population trend. The distribution of the Gatekeeper (P tithonus, oranje zandoogje) in NL is stable, where the populationsize has declined with 70% between 1992 and 2010.

📢 Join our #EcologySeminar this week!
Prof. Dr. Teja Tscharntke
will share new insights on biodiversity-friendly farming without yield loss.

📅 Wed 3. Dec. at 10:15 AM
📩 DM for webinar link

@agrarunigoe.bsky.social
@teja-tscharntke.bsky.social

#Postdoc position in #landscape #ecology with me. Last day to apply
#plants #traits #landscapechange #modelling
🌍🧪

Systematic Continental Scale Monitoring by Weather Surveillance Radar Shows Fewer Insects Above Warming Landscapes in the United States

🔗 buff.ly/KnY2LCi

Registration for the #BE20Conference is now open.
We’re celebrating 20 years of the Biodiversity Exploratories with our first international conference. ✨
We appreciate when the news circulates in the community.
www.biodiversity-exploratories.de/de/be20/

See you there. 🙂

@dfg.de @sgn.one

🕷️ Evaluation of BugBox, a software platform for AI-assisted bioinventories of arthropods

📖 Read the full paper here➡️ buff.ly/3GMV0Is

Congruent direction but different magnitude of biodiversity response to land-use intensification in space and time - Nature Ecology & Evolution Many ecological studies assume that space-for-time substitution approaches can be suitable proxies for unavailable time series. Here the authors show congruence between the two approaches in the direc...

Many ecological studies assume that space-for-time substitutions can be proxies for missing time series. Here the authors show congruence between the two in the direction but not the magnitude of plant and arthropod community responses to land-use intensification 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Job offer: PostDoc in “Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in European forests in the face of global changes” 80-100% (f/m/d) The aim of the projects is to investigate the impact of global changes on temperate forests toward designing management plans that allows ecosystem resilience and high levels of biodiversity. Within these projects, you will develop standard and more efficient ecological monitoring methodologies to understand how different aspects of biodiversity and/or associated ecosystem processes, in particular deadwood decomposition, in forests are altered by global change factors such as climate change, disturbances, and management-induced structural changes at different spatial and temporal scales. Through this research, you will gain a better mechanistic understanding of these relationships as a basis for predicting future changes related to management decisions and climate change. To measure biodiversity, you will use cutting-edge DNA-based methods, such as e-DNA metabarcoding of fungi, from soil and dead wood, and detecting arthropods and mammals from vegetation surfaces. Data on biodiversity and forest functions will be analyzed in an interdisciplinary manner. Depending on your skills and expertise, you can focus on more technical aspects of biodiversity quantification using eDNA, fundamental ecological research questions on modelling ecosystem processes or the more applied design of management practices. You are expected to publish your findings in high-impact journals and present them at international conferences. You hold a PhD degree in Biology or Environmental Sciences or in a related field and have a strong background forest ecology, in DNA-based biodiversity assessments (e-DNA metabarcoding), bioinformatics and multivariate statistical analyses, and/or experimental planning. Furthermore, we expect very good knowledge in R programming, a good command of English, as well as strong skills in scientific paper writing.

#PostDoc Alert! PhD in #Biology or #EnvironmentalSciences? Strong background in #ForestEcology, DNA-based biodiversity assessments, #Bioinformatics, and experimental planning? Our #ForestEntomology Group offers a 2-year #PostDoc position 🌳🧬💻: apply.refline.ch/273855/1798/... #ScienceJobs #eDNA

Divergent Trends in Insect Disturbance Across Europe's Temperate and Boreal Forests

🔗 buff.ly/APK3ybC

PhD position opening in community and biogeography PhD Position in Community Ecology & Biogeography, Montreal, Canada Our research group at Concordia University investigates the forces enabling the maintenance, and governing the distribution, of biol...

Our research group has an open PhD position! Please share widely!

Possible topics include:

Determinants of range limits

Assembly of ecological networks (eg,
plant-pollinator)

The role of soil arthropods (eg, ants) in carbon storage

Details:
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Sure, but I suspect that the nature brand still attracts people disproportionately and in the past, before the npj and communications series were launched, maybe a lot of good stuff came straight down from Nature subject journals because people were happy to just click transfer? 🤷

A new #Opinion piece in #RESSystematicEnt discusses how declining rates of species description call for improved taxonomic strategies, using insights from a megadiverse #insect order
doi.org/10.1111/syen.70019

#Taxonomy #SpeciesDescription #Diptera
@gkergoat.bsky.social @wileyeco.bsky.social

I've seen worse, I assume you tried different model families or a transformation of your response? You're not too far off, the histogram looks promising. qqplots are almost never perfect, at least not with real, interesting data :D

Yes, 100%, it is not good for ECRs if some journals have the reputation of a 50:50 chance of rigorous quality control. High quality non-novel stuff is important and if we have no reputable place for it, scientific misconduct will increase.