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  - 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  -