TY - JOUR A1 - Hopfenmueller, Sebastian A1 - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf A1 - Holzschuh, Andrea T1 - Trait-Specific Responses of Wild Bee Communities to Landscape Composition, Configuration and Local Factors N2 - Land-use intensification and loss of semi-natural habitats have induced a severe decline of bee diversity in agricultural landscapes. Semi-natural habitats like calcareous grasslands are among the most important bee habitats in central Europe, but they are threatened by decreasing habitat area and quality, and by homogenization of the surrounding landscape affecting both landscape composition and configuration. In this study we tested the importance of habitat area, quality and connectivity as well as landscape composition and configuration on wild bees in calcareous grasslands. We made detailed trait-specific analyses as bees with different traits might differ in their response to the tested factors. Species richness and abundance of wild bees were surveyed on 23 calcareous grassland patches in Southern Germany with independent gradients in local and landscape factors. Total wild bee richness was positively affected by complex landscape configuration, large habitat area and high habitat quality (i.e. steep slopes). Cuckoo bee richness was positively affected by complex landscape configuration and large habitat area whereas habitat specialists were only affected by the local factors habitat area and habitat quality. Small social generalists were positively influenced by habitat area whereas large social generalists (bumblebees) were positively affected by landscape composition (high percentage of semi-natural habitats). Our results emphasize a strong dependence of habitat specialists on local habitat characteristics, whereas cuckoo bees and bumblebees are more likely affected by the surrounding landscape. We conclude that a combination of large high-quality patches and heterogeneous landscapes maintains high bee species richness and communities with diverse trait composition. Such diverse communities might stabilize pollination services provided to crops and wild plants on local and landscape scales. KW - habitats KW - bees KW - grasslands KW - species diversity KW - biodiversity KW - pollination KW - flowers KW - foraging Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-112872 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Storms, Mona A1 - Jakhar, Aryan A1 - Mitesser, Oliver A1 - Jechow, Andreas A1 - Hölker, Franz A1 - Degen, Tobias A1 - Hovestadt, Thomas A1 - Degen, Jacqueline T1 - The rising moon promotes mate finding in moths JF - Communications Biology N2 - To counteract insect decline, it is essential to understand the underlying causes, especially for key pollinators such as nocturnal moths whose ability to orientate can easily be influenced by ambient light conditions. These comprise natural light sources as well as artificial light, but their specific relevance for moth orientation is still unknown. We investigated the influence of moonlight on the reproductive behavior of privet hawkmoths (Sphinx ligustri) at a relatively dark site where the Milky Way was visible while the horizon was illuminated by distant light sources and skyglow. We show that male moths use the moon for orientation and reach females significantly faster with increasing moon elevation. Furthermore, the choice of flight direction depended on the cardinal position of the moon but not on the illumination of the horizon caused by artificial light, indicating that the moon plays a key role in the orientation of male moths. KW - animal behaviour KW - biodiversity KW - conservation biology KW - entomology KW - urban ecology Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301365 VL - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thorn, Simon A1 - Seibold, Sebastian A1 - Leverkus, Alexandro B A1 - Michler, Thomas A1 - Müller, Jörg A1 - Noss, Reed F A1 - Stork, Nigel A1 - Vogel, Sebastian A1 - Lindenmayer, David B T1 - The living dead: acknowledging life after tree death to stop forest degradation JF - Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment N2 - Global sustainability agendas focus primarily on halting deforestation, yet the biodiversity crisis resulting from the degradation of remaining forests is going largely unnoticed. Forest degradation occurs through the loss of key ecological structures, such as dying trees and deadwood, even in the absence of deforestation. One of the main drivers of forest degradation is limited awareness by policy makers and the public on the importance of these structures for supporting forest biodiversity and ecosystem function. Here, we outline management strategies to protect forest health and biodiversity by maintaining and promoting deadwood, and propose environmental education initiatives to improve the general awareness of the importance of deadwood. Finally, we call for major reforms to forest management to maintain and restore deadwood; large, old trees; and other key ecological structures. KW - forest degradation KW - biodiversity KW - deadwood Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-218575 VL - 18 IS - 9 SP - 505 EP - 512 ER - TY - THES A1 - Vogel, Cassandra Ezra T1 - The effects of land-use and agroecological practices on biodiversity and ecosystem services in tropical smallholder farms T1 - Die Effekte von Landnutzung und Agroökologie auf Biodiversität und Ökosystemdienstleistungen in der tropischen Subsistenzlandwirtschaft N2 - Biodiversity is in rapid decline worldwide. These declines are more pronounced in areas that are currently biodiversity rich, but economically poor – essentially describing many tropical regions in the Global South where landscapes are dominated by smallholder agriculture. Agriculture is an important driver of biodiversity decline, through habitat destruction and unsustainable practices. Ironically, agriculture itself is dependent on a range of ecosystem services, such as pollination and pest control, provided by biodiversity. Biodiversity on fields and the delivery of ecosystem services to crops is often closely tied to the composition of the surrounding landscape – complex landscapes with a higher proportion of (semi-)natural habitats tend to support a high abundances and biodiversity of pollinators and natural enemies that are beneficial to crop production. However, past landscape scale studies have focused primarily on industrialized agricultural landscapes in the Global North, and context dependent differences between regions and agricultural systems are understudied. Smallholder agriculture supports 2 billion people worldwide and contributes to over half the world’s food supply. Yet smallholders, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, are underrepresented in research investigating the consequences of landscape change and agricultural practices. Where research in smallholder agriculture is conducted, the focus is often on commodity crops, such as cacao, and less on crops that are directly consumed by smallholder households, though the loss of services to these crops could potentially impact the most vulnerable farmers the hardest. Agroecology – a holistic and nature-based approach to agriculture, provides an alternative to unsustainable input-intensive agriculture. Agroecology has been found to benefit smallholders through improved agronomical and food-security outcomes. Co-benefits of agroecological practices with biodiversity and ecosystem services are assumed, but not often empirically tested. In addition, the local and landscape effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services are more commonly studied in isolation, but their potentially interactive effects are so far little explored. Our study region in northern Malawi exemplifies many challenges experienced by smallholder farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa and more generally in the Global South. Malawi is located in a global biodiversity hotspot, but biodiversity is threatened by rapid habitat loss and a push for input-intensive agriculture by government and other stakeholders. In contrast, agroecology has been effectively promoted and implemented in the study region. We investigated how land-use differences and the agroecological practices affects biodiversity and ecosystem services of multiple taxa in a maize-bean intercropping system (Chapter 2), and pollination of pumpkin (Chapter 3) and pigeon pea (Chapter 4). Additionally, the effects of local and landscape scale shrub- to farmland habitat conversion was investigated on butterfly communities, as well as the potential for agroecology to mitigate these effects (Chapter 5). N2 - Die globale Biodiversität nimmt rapide ab. Dieser Biodiversitätsverlust ist in Regionen die reich an Biodiversität aber wirtschaftlich arm sind besonders stark ausgeprägt, insbesondere in vielen tropischen Regionen, die durch Subsistenzlandwirtschaft geprägt sind. Durch die Zerstörung natürlicher Lebensräume und nicht nachhaltige Land Nutzung ist Landwirtschaft eine der Hauptursachen dieses Biodiversitätsrückgangs. Dabei ist gerade landwirtschaftliche Produktion abhängig von Biodiversität, da Biodiversität Ökosystemdienstleistungen wie Bestäubung und natürliche Schädlingskontrolle bereitstellt. Biodiversität und Ökosystemdienstleistungen auf Feldern werden stark durch die umliegende Landschaft beeinflusst - komplexe Landschaften mit einen großen Anteil (halb-)natürlicher haben in der Regel höhere Abudanzen und eine größere Biodiversität von Bestäubern und natürlichen Feinden die vorteilhaft für die landwirtschaftliche Produktion sind. Forschung auf Landschaftebene hat bisher jedoch vorrangig auf die industrialisierte Landwirtschaft in z.B. Europa oder die USA fokussiert und kontextabhängige Unterschiede zwischen Regionen und landwirtschaftlichen Systemen sind nicht ausreichend studiert..Weltweit sind etwa 2 Milliarden Menschen von Subsistenzlandwirtschaft abhängig. Jedoch sind diese Kleinbauern, in der Forschung über die Konsequenzen von Landnutzung und landwirtschaftlichen Managements auf Biodiversität und Ökosystemdienstleistungen unterrepräsentiert, insbesondere Kleinbauern aus Subsahara-Afrika. Die wenigen verfügbaren Studien legend den Fokus oft auf wirtschaftlich wichtige Kulturpflanzen, wie etwa Kakao, und selten auf Kulturpflanzen, die für Ernährungssicherheit der Kleinbauern wichtig sind, obwohl der Verlust der Ökosystemdienstleistungen diese möglicherweise am härtesten trifft. Agroökologie ist eine nachhaltigere Form des landwirtschaftlichen Managements als die konventionelle Landwirtschaft, und will den Einsatz von Agrochemie zu reduzieren und eine holistische Landwirtschaft fördern. Agroökologie steigert die Ernährungssicherheit von Kleinbauern, insbesondere wenn die Bauern viele verschiedene agroökologische Verfahren nutzen. Vorteile der Agroökologie für Biodiversität und Ökosystemdienstleistungen werden oft vermutet, wurden bislang jedoch selten empirisch getestet. Zusätzlich wurden Effekte auf Biodiversität und Ökosystemdienstleistungen vorrangig getrennt zwischen der lokalen und der Landschaftsebene betrachtet, was das Erkennen potentieller Interaktionen erschwert. Unsere Studienregion in Nord Malawi spiegelt die viele Herausforderungen der afrikanischen Zusammenfassung Subsistenzlandwirtschaft wider. Malawi liegt in einem Biodiversitäts-Hotspot, jedoch ist diese Biodiversität durch einen schnellen Rückgang natürlicher Lebensräume und durch die Intensivierung der Landwirtschaft stark gefährdet. Dem gegenüber stehen erfolgreicher Ausbau und Umsetzung von Agroökologie in der Region. Das gab mir die Möglichkeit, die Effekte von Landnutzung und Agroökologie auf Biodiversität und Ökosystemdienstleistungen in Malawi zu untersuchen. Dafür habe ich in Mais und Bohnen in Einzel- und Mischkultur 7 taxonomische Gruppen die verschiedene Ökosystemdienstleistungen erbringen erfasst (Kapitel 2) sowie Bestäuber und Bestäubung auf Kürbis (Kapitel 3) und Straucherbsen studiert (Kapitel 4). Zusätzlich habe ich an Schmetterlingen die Effekte von Lebensraumverlust auf der lokalen und auf Landschaftsebene studiert, und untersucht, ob Agroökologie potenziell negative Effekte mindern kann (Kapitel 5). KW - biodiversity KW - ecosystem services KW - landscape ecology KW - smallholder agriculture KW - pollination KW - pest control KW - agroecology KW - tropical ecology Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-290661 ER - TY - THES A1 - Hsieh, Samuel Yu-Lung T1 - The diversity and ecology of the spider communities of European beech canopy T1 - Diversität und Ökologie der Spinnengemeinschaften in den Buchenkronen N2 - Ein wesentliches Ziel ökologischer Forschung ist es, die Frage zu beantworten, wie Arten koexistieren können und die biologische Vielfalt erhalten bleibt. Um zu verstehen, wie dabei Gemeinschaften in unterschiedlichen räumlich-zeitlichen Dimensionen interagieren, um die biologische Vielfalt zu erhalten, ist ein umfassendes prozessorientiertes Wissen erforderlich. Demzufolge konzentrierte sich meine Studie im Wesentlichen auf die Biodiversität und die sie beeinflussenden raum-zeitlichen ökologischen Prozesse. Vergleicht man die Ähnlich- bzw. Unähnlichkeit der in verschieden alten Beständen lebenden Spinnengemeinschaften der Buchen (Fagus sylvatica L.), dann zeigt sich, dass die älteste Baumkohorte offensichtlich einzigartige Ressourcen besitzt, welche die Zusammensetzung der Spinnengemeinschaften deutlich prägen. Über das Jahr hin zeigten die Spinnengemeinschaften trotz der jahreszeitlich unterschiedlich ökologischen Randbedingungen eine sich wiederholende, vorhersehbare Dynamik. Der Vergleich über die Jahre ergab, dass das "Neutrale Modell" und das "Nischen-Modell" gleichzeitig funktionieren können. Beide sind notwendig, um die Dynamik der in den Buchenkronen der verschiedenen Altersklassen lebenden Spinnengemeinschaften vollständig erklären zu können. N2 - A major goal of the main topics of ecology is to answer the question of how species can co-exist and maintain biodiversity. To understand how community dynamics operate in different spatio-temporal dimensions to govern biodiversity patterns requires a process-based knowledge. Thus, this study focused primarily on biodiversity patterns and ecological processes at both spatial and temporal scales. Spatially, the diversity and similarity of spider communities in high, intermediate, and low strata of beech trees represented a set of age-related effects: Old-growth trees provided unique and distinct resources to spiders and in turn possessed discrete spider compositions. Intra-annually, spider communities in different seasons showed a repeated, predictable temporal dynamics. Inter-annually, comparison revealed that neutral and niche models can operate in tandem, and that both are needed to fully explain the dynamics of arboreal spider assemblages among different canopy strata in this beech forest. KW - Spinnen KW - Biodiversität KW - Rotbuche KW - Araneae KW - biodiversity KW - ecological process KW - European beech KW - Würzburg University Forest KW - Ökologische Prozesse KW - Universitätsforst Würzburg Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-66966 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kaluza, Benjamin F. A1 - Wallace, Helen M. A1 - Heard, Tim A. A1 - Minden, Vanessa A1 - Klein, Alexandra A1 - Leonhardt, Sara D. T1 - Social bees are fitter in more biodiverse environments JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Bee population declines are often linked to human impacts, especially habitat and biodiversity loss, but empirical evidence is lacking. To clarify the link between biodiversity loss and bee decline, we examined how floral diversity affects (reproductive) fitness and population growth of a social stingless bee. For the first time, we related available resource diversity and abundance to resource (quality and quantity) intake and colony reproduction, over more than two years. Our results reveal plant diversity as key driver of bee fitness. Social bee colonies were fitter and their populations grew faster in more florally diverse environments due to a continuous supply of food resources. Colonies responded to high plant diversity with increased resource intake and colony food stores. Our findings thus point to biodiversity loss as main reason for the observed bee decline. KW - biodiversity KW - ecosystem services KW - social bees KW - fitness Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-177231 VL - 8 IS - 12353 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Georgiev, Kostadin B. A1 - Chao, Anne A1 - Castro, Jorge A1 - Chen, Yan‐Han A1 - Choi, Chang‐Yong A1 - Fontaine, Joseph B. A1 - Hutto, Richard L. A1 - Lee, Eun‐Jae A1 - Müller, Jörg A1 - Rost, Josep A1 - Żmihorski, Michal A1 - Thorn, Simon T1 - Salvage logging changes the taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional successional trajectories of forest bird communities JF - Journal of Applied Ecology N2 - Salvage logging following natural disturbances may alter the natural successional trajectories of biological communities by affecting the occurrences of species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages. However, few studies have examined whether dissimilarities between bird communities of salvaged and unsalvaged forests are more pronounced for rare species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages than for their more common counterparts. We compiled data on breeding bird assemblages from nine study areas in North America, Europe and Asia, covering a 17‐year period following wildfire or windstorm disturbances and subsequent salvage logging. We tested whether dissimilarities based on non‐shared species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages (a) decreased or increased over time and (b) the responses of rare, common and dominant species varied, by using a unified statistical framework based on Hill numbers and null models. We found that dissimilarities between bird communities caused by salvage logging persisted over time for rare, common and dominant species, evolutionary lineages and for rare functional groups. Dissimilarities of common and dominant functional groups increased 14 years post disturbance. Salvage logging led to significantly larger dissimilarities than expected by chance. Functional dissimilarities between salvaged and unsalvaged sites were lower compared to taxonomic and phylogenetic dissimilarities. In general, dissimilarities were highest for rare, followed by common and dominant species. Synthesis and applications. Our research demonstrates that salvage logging did not decrease dissimilarities of bird communities over time and taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dissimilarities persisted for over a decade. We recommend resource managers and decision makers to reserve portions of disturbed forest to enable unmanaged post‐disturbance succession of bird communities, particularly to conserve rare species found in unsalvaged disturbed forests. KW - biodiversity KW - breeding season KW - forest management KW - harvesting KW - Hill numbers KW - natural disturbance KW - successional trajectory Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-214887 VL - 57 IS - 6 SP - 1103 EP - 1112 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Uhler, Johannes A1 - Redlich, Sarah A1 - Zhang, Jie A1 - Hothorn, Torsten A1 - Tobisch, Cynthia A1 - Ewald, Jörg A1 - Thorn, Simon A1 - Seibold, Sebastian A1 - Mitesser, Oliver A1 - Morinère, Jérôme A1 - Bozicevic, Vedran A1 - Benjamin, Caryl S. A1 - Englmeier, Jana A1 - Fricke, Ute A1 - Ganuza, Cristina A1 - Haensel, Maria A1 - Riebl, Rebekka A1 - Rojas-Botero, Sandra A1 - Rummler, Thomas A1 - Uphus, Lars A1 - Schmidt, Stefan A1 - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf A1 - Müller, Jörg T1 - Relationships of insect biomass and richness with land use along a climate gradient JF - Nature Communications N2 - Recently reported insect declines have raised both political and social concern. Although the declines have been attributed to land use and climate change, supporting evidence suffers from low taxonomic resolution, short time series, a focus on local scales, and the collinearity of the identified drivers. In this study, we conducted a systematic assessment of insect populations in southern Germany, which showed that differences in insect biomass and richness are highly context dependent. We found the largest difference in biomass between semi-natural and urban environments (-42%), whereas differences in total richness (-29%) and the richness of threatened species (-56%) were largest from semi-natural to agricultural environments. These results point to urbanization and agriculture as major drivers of decline. We also found that richness and biomass increase monotonously with increasing temperature, independent of habitat. The contrasting patterns of insect biomass and richness question the use of these indicators as mutual surrogates. Our study provides support for the implementation of more comprehensive measures aimed at habitat restoration in order to halt insect declines. KW - biodiversity KW - ecology Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-265058 VL - 12 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Peters, Marcell K. A1 - Hemp, Andreas A1 - Appelhans, Tim A1 - Behler, Christina A1 - Classen, Alice A1 - Detsch, Florian A1 - Ensslin, Andreas A1 - Ferger, Stefan W. A1 - Frederiksen, Sara B. A1 - Gebert, Frederike A1 - Haas, Michael A1 - Helbig-Bonitz, Maria A1 - Hemp, Claudia A1 - Kindeketa, William J. A1 - Mwangomo, Ephraim A1 - Ngereza, Christine A1 - Otte, Insa A1 - Röder, Juliane A1 - Rutten, Gemma A1 - Costa, David Schellenberger A1 - Tardanico, Joseph A1 - Zancolli, Giulia A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Eardley, Connal D. A1 - Peters, Ralph S. A1 - Rödel, Mark-Oliver A1 - Schleuning, Matthias A1 - Ssymank, Axel A1 - Kakengi, Victor A1 - Zhang, Jie A1 - Böhning-Gaese, Katrin A1 - Brandl, Roland A1 - Kalko, Elisabeth K.V. A1 - Kleyer, Michael A1 - Nauss, Thomas A1 - Tschapka, Marco A1 - Fischer, Markus A1 - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf T1 - Predictors of elevational biodiversity gradients change from single taxa to the multi-taxa community level JF - Nature Communications N2 - The factors determining gradients of biodiversity are a fundamental yet unresolved topic in ecology. While diversity gradients have been analysed for numerous single taxa, progress towards general explanatory models has been hampered by limitations in the phylogenetic coverage of past studies. By parallel sampling of 25 major plant and animal taxa along a 3.7 km elevational gradient on Mt. Kilimanjaro, we quantify cross-taxon consensus in diversity gradients and evaluate predictors of diversity from single taxa to a multi-taxa community level. While single taxa show complex distribution patterns and respond to different environmental factors, scaling up diversity to the community level leads to an unambiguous support for temperature as the main predictor of species richness in both plants and animals. Our findings illuminate the influence of taxonomic coverage for models of diversity gradients and point to the importance of temperature for diversification and species coexistence in plant and animal communities. KW - community ecology KW - macroecology KW - tropical ecology KW - biodiversity Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-169374 VL - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ziegler, Alice A1 - Meyer, Hanna A1 - Otte, Insa A1 - Peters, Marcell K. A1 - Appelhans, Tim A1 - Behler, Christina A1 - Böhning-Gaese, Katrin A1 - Classen, Alice A1 - Detsch, Florian A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Eardley, Connal D. A1 - Ferger, Stefan W. A1 - Fischer, Markus A1 - Gebert, Friederike A1 - Haas, Michael A1 - Helbig-Bonitz, Maria A1 - Hemp, Andreas A1 - Hemp, Claudia A1 - Kakengi, Victor A1 - Mayr, Antonia V. A1 - Ngereza, Christine A1 - Reudenbach, Christoph A1 - Röder, Juliane A1 - Rutten, Gemma A1 - Schellenberger Costa, David A1 - Schleuning, Matthias A1 - Ssymank, Axel A1 - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf A1 - Tardanico, Joseph A1 - Tschapka, Marco A1 - Vollstädt, Maximilian G. R. A1 - Wöllauer, Stephan A1 - Zhang, Jie A1 - Brandl, Roland A1 - Nauss, Thomas T1 - Potential of airborne LiDAR derived vegetation structure for the prediction of animal species richness at Mount Kilimanjaro JF - Remote Sensing N2 - The monitoring of species and functional diversity is of increasing relevance for the development of strategies for the conservation and management of biodiversity. Therefore, reliable estimates of the performance of monitoring techniques across taxa become important. Using a unique dataset, this study investigates the potential of airborne LiDAR-derived variables characterizing vegetation structure as predictors for animal species richness at the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. To disentangle the structural LiDAR information from co-factors related to elevational vegetation zones, LiDAR-based models were compared to the predictive power of elevation models. 17 taxa and 4 feeding guilds were modeled and the standardized study design allowed for a comparison across the assemblages. Results show that most taxa (14) and feeding guilds (3) can be predicted best by elevation with normalized RMSE values but only for three of those taxa and two of those feeding guilds the difference to other models is significant. Generally, modeling performances between different models vary only slightly for each assemblage. For the remaining, structural information at most showed little additional contribution to the performance. In summary, LiDAR observations can be used for animal species prediction. However, the effort and cost of aerial surveys are not always in proportion with the prediction quality, especially when the species distribution follows zonal patterns, and elevation information yields similar results. KW - biodiversity KW - species richness KW - LiDAR KW - elevation KW - partial least square regression KW - arthropods KW - birds KW - bats KW - predictive modeling Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-262251 SN - 2072-4292 VL - 14 IS - 3 ER -