Phenotypic responses to climate affect individual fitness, but the extent to which this translates into effects on population dynamics remains poorly understood. We assemble 213 time series on phenotypes and population sizes of wild vertebrates globally and match them with local climate data. Our meta-analysis…
Theoretische Konzepte sind in ökologischen Studien unerlässlich, da sie es ermöglichen, komplexe ökologische Prozesse zu bewerten und zukünftige Trends vorherzusagen, indem sie die Kernprozesse innerhalb vielschichtiger Ökosysteme vereinfachen. Nahrungsnetze, bestehend aus Arten und ihren trophischen…
Ecologists have long debated the universality of the energetic equivalence rule, which posits that population energy use should be invariant with average body size due to negative size–density scaling. We explore size–density and size–energy use scaling across 183 geographically–distributed soil invertebrate…
Abstract Fish stocks are increasingly overexploited due to the growing global demand for seafood. As these species are embedded in complex food webs, traditional single-species management plans should be replaced by models that integrate multi-species fisheries with economic market feedbacks into complex…
ABSTRACT Information transmission among species is a fundamental aspect of natural ecosystems that faces significant disruption from rapidly growing anthropogenic sensory pollution. Understanding the constraints of information flow on species' trophic interactions is often overlooked due to a limited…
Abstract The functional response describes feeding rates of consumers as a function of resource density. While models for feeding on a single resource species are well studied and supported by a large body of empirical research, consumers feeding on multiple resource species are ubiquitous in nature.…
Understanding the mechanisms underlying diversity–productivity relationships (DPRs) is crucial to mitigating the effects of forest biodiversity loss. Tree–tree interactions in diverse communities are fundamental in driving growth rates, potentially shaping the emergent DPRs, yet remain poorly explored.…
Experiments have demonstrated that plant diverse communities are more productive, supported by faster nutrient cycles and can host more abundant or diverse consumer communities. Long-term experiments have provided evidence that the diversity-productivity relationship strengthens with time. The mechanisms…
Abstract Understanding and predicting how densities of interacting species change over time has been one of the main goals of community ecology, which has become a pressing challenge in the context of global change. We present the R package ATNr , which provides an implementation of different versions…
Plant community productivity generally increases with biodiversity, but the strength of this relationship exhibits strong empirical variation. In meta‐food‐web simulations, we addressed if the spatial overlap in plants' resource access and animal space‐use can explain such variability. We found that…
Abstract Species‐rich communities exhibit higher levels of ecosystem functioning compared with species‐poor ones, and this positive relationship strengthens over time. One proposed explanation for this phenomenon is the reduction of niche overlap among plants or animals, which corresponds to increased…
Anthropogenic global warming has major implications for mobile terrestrial insects, including long‐term effects from constant warming, for example, on species distribution patterns, and short‐term effects from heat extremes that induce immediate physiological responses. To cope with heat extremes, they…
Abstract Movement facilitates and alters species interactions, the resulting food web structures, species distribution patterns, community structures and survival of populations and communities. In the light of global change, it is crucial to gain a general understanding of how movement depends on traits…
Global ecosystems are facing a deepening biodiversity crisis, necessitating robust approaches to quantifying species extinction risk. The lower limit of the macroecological relationship between species range and body size has long been hypothesized as an estimate of the relationship between the minimum…
Die Tropenwälder Amerikas, Afrikas, Süd- und Südostasiens und Ozeaniens gehören zu den am stärksten bedrohten Lebensräumen des 21. Jahrhunderts und sind das Ziel multinationaler Bemühungen, um die fortschreitende Abholzung, den Bergbau, die unkontrollierte Ausbeutung von Ressourcen und die Bedrohung…
We live in the Anthropocene, where humans are the dominant influencers of processes on earth. Fisheries are now one of the most important drivers of marine ecosystem biodiversity. More and more fish stocks are being (over-)exploited in an effort to feed the growing world population. Yet little is known…
Biodiversity patterns emerge from ecological processes that operate across multiple spatial and temporal scales, with animal movement linking local interactions to larger-scale dynamics. This thesis investigates fundamental constraints on sustained (aerobic) movement capacities, including the effects…
Many ecological patterns and processes are grounded in the basal trait and process of active movement, rendering not only individual survival possible, but also dynamics of populations and communities. The environment is a decisive external factor constraining movement. Active movement thus represents…
Increasing rates of carbon emission, unsustainable development, and intense land cover change, led to an inevitable environmental degradation. While much of the lost biodiversity has not been described by scientists yet, we continue to lose new species at impressive rates. In this thesis, I compiled…
The ratio of predator-to-prey biomass is a key element of trophic structure that is typically investigated from a food chain perspective, ignoring channels of energy transfer (e.g. omnivory) that may govern community structure. Here, we address this shortcoming by characterising the biomass structure…