Just yesterday, we completed the setup of the final rain-out shelter for the BEClimWood experiment in Schorfheide-Chorin, completing the set up in all three regions of the @bexplo.bsky.social 🥳 Huge thanks to the amazing team @sebseibold.bsky.social @stellawimmer.bsky.social @annestte.bsky.social 🙌

New paper on metacommunity dynamics out! 📃🍁 Led by Oliver Mitesser we show that habitat heterogeneity shifts communities from patch-dynamics toward mass effects and species sorting using beetles as focal taxon. 🐞😍 @betafor.bsky.social @cofeuniwue.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Forest Heterogeneity by Chain Saw: How Between‐Patch Variation in Old Growth Attributes Changes the Metacommunities of Beetles

Metacommunity theory has expanded our understanding of how spatial dynamics and local interactions influence species communities, but we lack empirical studies specifically in terrestrial habitats te...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Always interesting to see how phenology changes by a few hundred kilometers. Sampling BEClimWood in Schorfheide and there weren‘t as many spring geophytes already flowering as in Hainich, but more animals around. Also saw some cranes, white-tailed eagles, whooper and Bewick's swans!

First week of fieldwork this year successfully completed! We've been extremely lucky with this nice spring weather while taking the first samples from the new BEClimWood experiment in Hainich at the @bexplo.bsky.social Big thanks again to this great team! First 🌷 were also popping up everywhere

HIRING! We are looking for a new PhD student to work on insects in deadwood, effects of microclimate and land use. This is part of the Biodiversity Exploratories @bexplo.bsky.social and will use a new experiment using rain-out shelters in different regions of Germany. EU driver´s licence required.

Are you a researcher translating fungal science into real conservation action? 📣 Call for abstracts now open 📍14–17 April 2026 in Uppsala, Sweden 🔗 Apply: www.slu.se/en/fce2026/ ⏰ Deadline: 25 Feb 2026

Fungal Conservation in Europe: Evidence to Action

We are delighted to invite you to the upcoming meeting: Fungal Conservation in Europe: Evidence to Action which will take place in Uppsala, Sweden 14-17 April 2026.

slu.se

Preparations for our new #deadwood experiment BEClimWood are in full swing! 🌳 The experiment explores how land use & #climate factors shape #biodiversity around deadwood. Our local management team is hard at work—moving stones (one weighed 28.5 kg!) to set up the logs at the Hainich Exploratory. 💪

First day at this years #gfoe2025 was a blast! See you at the deadwood session on Wednesday which I am hosting with my colleague Julia Moll. Talks will cover different species groups 🍄🦠🪲🐜 and processes in temperate and tropical forest. See you there!! @gfoesoc.bsky.social

Now on CRAN, ggdiagram is a #ggplot2 extension that draws diagrams programmatically in #Rstats. Allows for precise control in how objects, labels, and equations are placed in relation to each other. wjschne.github.io/ggdiagram/ar...

New 📃 out, led by @LeahVogelfänger. While the ecology of saproxylic beetles is well studied, other invertebrates often come up short. Studying 15 taxa across 8 years, we found that—unlike for beetles—tree species mattered little for the communities of these diverse groups. 🌳 @bexplo.bsky.social

Metabarcoding reveals time after tree death as main driver of diversity and composition of invertebrate communities in deadwood

Increasing the availability of deadwood habitats to protect saproxylic biodiversity is a key objective of forest nature conservation. However, most kn…

sciencedirect.com