Our new @nature.com shows that energy flows mediated by mammals and birds across sub-Saharan Africa have declined by >30% unevenly across functional groups, with major consequences ecosystem functions shorturl.at/AD0Yb

Check this out: the global biomass of mammals since 1850 just out in @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌐

“You don’t just write results, you tell a story” Gaby Rabinovich reminds us to write for an interdisciplinary audience, be honest about limits, and keep the big question clear Read more in A Pocket Guide to Scientific Writing & Publishing! mybook.to/ScienceGuide 🧪🌐📖

What makes leaf litter attractive to decomposers? 🍂 As Christian Wirth noted at ARBOfun last week, nutrient resorption varies among tree species - leaving litter feeders with a diverse buffet to choose from. #TreeDi-MultiTroph conference #Ecology #SoilLife #Biodiversity

Joint conference between @treedi.bsky.social and @multitroph.bsky.social has begun in Leipzig! Good way to start my last year of PhD 🕷🐛🐝🌿

Scary title for sure.. questionable picture 🤔🐝 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A new study in Science evaluating published data from 19 countries has pinpointed the minimum habitat levels needed to sustain pollinators in agricultural landscapes. https://scim.ag/3VIq4Cg

It's not only bees. Syrphid flies are also very important pollinators and are so gosh darn cute 😍 Episyrphus balteatus,☝️ for scale

📢Check out our latest BE-publication on #invertebrate 🐞abundance in #grasslands 🌱 published in @basicapplecol.bsky.social. Reducing land use (single late #mowing) increased #insects by +41% after 1 yr and +99% after 3 yrs. Species diversity, however, remained unchanged. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.ba...

🗞️New study in @globalchangebio.bsky.social 🗞️ 🌳Diversity in resource use strategies promotes productivity across a global network of tree #diversity experiments?🌲 Read our new study led by Joel Jensen together with #TreeDivNet here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our paper on species and trait abundance distributions in @jappliedecology.bsky.social is now out in an issue: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Led by Werner Ulrich and many other great colleagues.

The german+austian+swiss conference of #ecology (gfö) just wrapped up, and I was stoked to present results from a long-term biodiversity study - a huge combined effort involving a decade of insect population monitoring. I also managed to check out some entomological collections in Würzburg! 🐝

New Europe-wide study finds that efforts to provide pollinator habitat in urban areas - such as sowing wildflower mixes - really do work, boosting numbers of bees and butterflies: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

And that's #labwork also wrapped up! For the next year my PhD will exclusively exclusively involve writing manuscripts... I have mixed feelings about that 😅 This here is just a small part of the insects that we sampled. Some very cool bees and wasps, including potentially new species.

📢 ITV-net: the first Italian database on #PlantFunctionalTraits with #IntraspecificTraitVariability 🌱 ITV-net includes over 8,500 leaf trait records (LA/SLA) for 709 plant species across 8 Italian habitats, from coastal dunes to alpine grasslands. #EnviXLab www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Ever seen a moth do some #pushups? 💪💪💪💪💪💪 This big guy came flying to our light trap! We handled him carefully and let him go shortly later. Here he's showing some defensive mechanism to scare us off. Species: Greater death's head hawkmoth

Back in Jiangxi for one last PhD field trip. Couldn't help but immediately set up a light trap to see what's flying. Fingers crossed for some big beetles 🪲

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it. Learn more during #InsectWeek: scim.ag/40mj1S8

Every country is warming. Every country is experiencing more extreme weather events because of climate change, mainly caused by burning fossil fuels. www.ShowYourStripes.info Time to #ShowYourStripes and start climate conversations to prompt actions to reduce emissions, personally & collectively.

A black-striped orchard spider (Leucage celebesiana) waiting on a leaf for insect to fly into its web. Notice the single strand of silk holding the leaf in tension! Like so she'll be able to detect any minute vibration. 📍Dexing, Jiangxi China #macromonday 🕸

Postdoc Job offer for Arthropod Ecologists 🪲🕷️ Michael Staab @leuphana.bsky.social offers a 3 year postdoc starting in October latest. Arthropod diversity, interactions & functions in different research programs, e.g. @bexplo.bsky.social Apply by June 19th www.leuphana.de/en/universit...

Hopping into #macromonday with this Monkey grasshopper nymph! Wishing all a good week filled with scientific reading and perhaps writing 📚🖋 Eumastacidae sp.

Our study ‘The #global #human impact on #biodiversity’ is out in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌍🌐🐟🌿🪲 Unprecedented synthesis of >2000 studies led by @francoiskeck.bsky.social shows humans are not only shrinking species numbers—but reshaping entire communities across the planet. 🧵1/5

💬 Would you buy bee-friendly food? Then help us with your opinion and take part in our survey (approx. 20 min). 👉Your answers will help to make our food system more sustainable and promote the protection of pollinators. Available in 7 different languages! agreconlab.limesurvey.net/328536?lang=en

Great news today at Uni Freiburg! #FutureForests in coming to town 🌳🌳

Holy smokes! I've got the male too! I'm tearing up. Just heard from the scientist that described the new species and this handsome lad is the male. So awesome! (Chrysometa chuchaqui)

May 20 is World Bee Day. There are ~20,000 different bee species in the world. 🧪🧵🐝 Here in Ontario we have at least 400 native bees (none of which are honeybees, which are from Europe). Bees are key to pollination. According to the UN nearly 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species depend, 🧵

Happy world #bee day!! Today we thank them for their hard work in supporting a key ecosystem function #pollination, and appreciate their beauty 🐝. Here, a Ceratina sp. on a flower in Jiangxi, China. #macro

Spring time... to get busy! And these two Tetanocerini wasted no time. Named marsh flies, these insects live next to water bodies, and apparently the larvae are gastropod (slugs & snails) hunters/parasites?! More trophic interactions to study? @multitroph.bsky.social #macromonday

Find Bröcher et al.'s Data Paper here: doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

Taxonomists can be brutal... but just like many of the species they describe, they too are endangered: a decline that has been ongoing for decades www.nature.com/articles/43762 op.europa.eu/en/publicati...

We are #hiring a lecturer and #researcher: - Teaching in ecology and nature conservation - Research on plant-pollinator interactions - Supervision of students - Contribution to our major collaborative projects Start 01.09.2025 Salary according to TV-L E13, 100% 🔗 uni-freiburg.de/stellenangeb...

Gave a seminar about long-term bee and wasp temporal dynamics at @nmbern.bsky.social today. Good thing about collaborating with a curator? You get to marvel at the hidden entomology collection 😍😍😍

Perfectly camouflaged, this two-tailed spider (Hersiliidae sp.) waits patiently for any insect to fall into its trap: a thin coating of silk applied directly on the tree bark. Once it feels a vibration, with lighting fast movements it speeds along the tree to catch its prey. #macromonday #spider

Rooted in history 🌴. Martino Maggioni from Florence standing proud with Trachycarpus caespitosa - the living #type specimen described in the 1800s by his ancestor Odoardo Beccari, legendary botanist & explorer. Still thriving at the family’s 14th c. home.

Our latest, on the effect of plant diversity on productivity, this time using duckweed. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... We reproduced results obtained over 10-20 years with trees (increasing effect of diversity over time) in just under two months with these incredible plants! 👇

The loss of a dominant species in a community could have major impacts on ecosystem functioning. Here, a manipulative field experiment on ants shows that species functional redundancy mitigates multifunctionality declines due to suppression of dominant species www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to receive our "field guide to urban plants" to fight against plant blindness with @juliakrohmer.bsky.social 🌷😊

Thrilled to share our globally pioneering research on DNA metabarcoding of spider egg sacs! A proud moment for Indian science - revealing novel host-parasitoid complexes and trophic networks. #DNAmetabarcoding #IndianScience #Biodiversity #Hymenoptera #Spider www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Good insight into some great long-term forest studies in China and Panama

A Cuckoo Bee (Epeolus olympiellus) photographed last summer. One that I forgot about and just stumbled across on my phone this evening! #CuckooBee #Bee #Hymenoptera

Shout-out to this curious jumping #spider I encountered while sampling reeds for cavity-nesting Hymenoptera in #jiangxi China 🐝🕷 Clearly bees and wasps were not the only arthropods attracted by the trap-nests! #macromonday

Very interesting quick lecture about the evolution of a bee's stinger! One of the most universally feared natural defensive weapons 🐝

New online! Biodiversity–ecosystem function research must consider abundance and not just diversity

1/ Meet Kikiki huna — the world’s smallest flying insect. This fairy wasp is so tiny, it makes ants look like giants. #Microfauna #InsectFacts #Entomology

Rate my setup 🐝 Spring-time #lab work done and dusted. Time to return home! Round 2 this summer 🐝💪 @multitroph.bsky.social

@restpoll.bsky.social introduced the #AGRI4POL to its newsletter subscribers.🌱 The article explores how the #AGRRI4POL addresses climate change, promotes sustainable agriculture, and opens the door to future collaboration between the two projects. 🤝 💻Read in full here: restpoll.eu/project-agri...

Here is the likely host species targeted by the #parasitoid: Anterhynchium flavomarginatum, seen here licking a leaf. Maybe picking up minerals deposited from recent rainfall 🌧🌿

Long-term management is required for the recovery of pollination networks and function in restored grasslands 🌱🌏 Grassland management, including mowing, should be maintained for a certain period that exceeds at least 75 years 📈🧪 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...