New collaborative paper led by Takehiro Sasaki out @natecoevo.nature.com with plenty of contributors from our group & others @idiv-research.bsky.social Biodiversity enhances productivity under drought in more arid grasslands but has limited effects in more arid forests 🌱🌲 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Biodiversity effects under climate extremes intensify with aridity in grasslands but not forests - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning under climate extremes may depend on ecosystem type and baseline aridity. Here the authors show that the effects of plant diversity on productivity are st...

doi.org

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI rdcu.be/ftL0T Lees et al. highlight the growing problem of AI-manipulated media contaminating citizen science platforms

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

rdcu.be

Invasive fern Azolla filiculoides is spreading across the pond cultural landscape of northern bavaria 🌿 you can even see it on aerial pictures 🥲

Cuscuta spp. (dodder) is a fancy parasitic plant that twines around other plants. After germination, the seedling has only a brief window to find a host. Once attached, it forms haustoria that penetrate host tissues and connect to the vascular system, while its own root degenerates 🌿

Botanical mapping in northern Bavaria today for future red lists :) This mapping quadrant reached almost 700 vascular plant species. Esp. the extensively used carp ponds are great 🌿🌻 images: Utricularia x neglecta, and Cuscuta europaea, Butomus umbellatus

Scolia hirta, quite strange wasp that can smell burrowed larvae of certain beetle which the female diggs up to lay their eggs in it🥚 threatened with extinction in Germany, but apparently rather common in Leipzig 🐝

Ophrys apifera is flowering in Leipzigs restored open pit coal mining sites where the coal excavators dug up some ancient shorelines with calcareous sands 🌊 which are nowadays quite nice nutrient-poor and base-rhich pioneer meadows 🌿

Sphagnum angustifolium together with Aulacomnium palustre at the edge of Pomponrahka ombotrophic bog in SW Finland :)

After several years in gestation, the long awaited paper on Aneura pinguis agg is now out. Lots of hard work from the team @thebotanics.bsky.social has resulted in the description of 12 species based on molecular and morphological criteria. Free to download at link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Under the invisibility cape: the secret world of Aneura pinguis in Europe and Greenland - Plant Systematics and Evolution

Multiple accessions of the simple thalloid liverwort Aneura from around the world, but with particular focus on western Europe, have been sequenced for a range of standard plastid DNA barcoding marker...

link.springer.com

currently the forest patches around Leipzig are full of Amata phegea, a nice butterfly that quite rare in Germany but very common locally 🦋

Canopy Shenanigans in the Leipzig Riparian Forest Canopy Crane 🌿🏗️

The Jena experiment flowering atm :)

The first comprehensive analysis of vegetation changes across Europe, based on the ReSurveyEurope dataset, is out! In an article led by Stephan Kambach, we analyzed 57,390 time series of vegetation plots. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Sphaerocarpos cf europaeus, a strange looking liverwort growing on bare disturbed soil in extensively managed arable fields, endangered across Europe 🌿

spring in Leipzigs riparian forest 🌷

Pesticide residues found to be the second strongest driver of soil biodiversity (after soil properties) across European ecosystems! 🌐🌏🪱🦠🍄 rdcu.be/e1cOL

Pesticide residues alter taxonomic and functional biodiversity in soils

Nature - A wide survey of pesticide effects on soil biodiversity across 373 sites in Europe reveals that pesticide residues occur in 70% of sites and have major effects on soil biodiversity and...

rdcu.be

Cladonia stellaris in the snow ❄️

New online! The biodiversity, genomics, ecology and evolution of mushroom-forming fungi

The biodiversity, genomics, ecology and evolution of mushroom-forming fungi

Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Published online: 02 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44358-025-00107-zMushroom-forming fungi have along evolutionary history and a suite of important ecological roles. This Review highlights advances in understanding of Agaricomycetes evolution and ecology driven by genomic research.

bit.ly

Preprint available :) Small-scale fen restoration brings back key species and ecosystem functions 🌿

bioRxiv Ecology@biorxiv-ecology.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Small-scale fen restoration brings back key species and ecosystem functions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.01.697300v1

Small-scale fen restoration brings back key species and ecosystem functions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.01.697300v1

Did you know there are freshwater sponges in Germany? Spongilla lancustris is a demosponge growing in shallow, clear and clean ponds, lakes etc. it becomes dormant in winter and can survive dry periods! seen today in a dry pond in northern bavaria :)

How to measure seed longevity in storage when comparing accessions or species? We looked in detail at the most widely used measure (p50) and found out that it is... suboptimal at best. We highlight alternatives. @gfoesoc.bsky.social @unimarburg.bsky.social

Botanical Society of America@botsocamerica.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Limitations of p50 as a measure of seed longevity in comparative studies and the way forward New in #AppsPlantSci by Klepka, Carta, Hay & @annabucharova.bsky.social bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #botany #plantscience #seedviability #seedbank #genebank #plantconservation

Restored open pit coal mining site near Leipzig, quite interesting pioneer habitat :)

Some white beams endemic to franconia, northern bavaria :) Karpatiosorbus franconica and Hedlundia pulchra

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Happy to finally share this important article on barriers in ecology led by @canobarbacil.bsky.social in the journal Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment. The idea for this paper originated at the nice #ANdiNA workshop in Spain a couple of years ago.

Carlos Cano-Barbacil@canobarbacil.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Why do so many ecologists share common feelings of disconnection between their research goals and real-world impact? 🌍 Our new article in #FE&E explores the constraints that limit ecological research and how we can mitigate them. 👇 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New study led by @lsachsenmaier.bsky.social @agwirthweigelt.bsky.social shows: forest stands made up of tree species with different water-use strategies (not just many species) grow better in drought years. #iDivResearch #Biodiversity www.idiv.de/diverse-fore...

Diverse forests are more resistant to climate change

idiv.de

📢 New publication ' #Bryophytes hold a larger gene family space than vascular plants' by Shanshan Dong et al. in @natgenet.nature.com 🧬🧪 doi.org/10.1038/s415... #evolution #pangenome

Bryophytes hold a larger gene family space than vascular plants - Nature Genetics

A super-pangenome analysis incorporating 123 newly sequenced bryophyte genomes reveals that bryophytes exhibit a larger number of unique and lineage-specific gene families than vascular plants.

doi.org

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some fancy Ascophyllum🌿