Acoustic monitoring is becoming increasingly important for evaluating the biodiversity and conservation value of sites across land use or regeneration scenarios. A team led by Jörg Müller and his lab at the University of Würzburg monitored bird sounds using recorders installed in 85 study plots in the Canandé region of …
For many animal species, we have a fairly good understanding of their ecological niche, including their main diets. For others we don’t – or we can only make assumptions based on related species. Therefore, observations of diets, feeding behavior and other natural history information are important. Niklas Fuchs, Eva Tamargo …
For Little-Devil Poison Frogs (Dendrobatidae: Oophaga sylvatica), researchers in Reassembly have now a case of parasitism for the first time: Myasis, a parasitic disease caused by fly larvae in living animal tissues. Myasis affects a variety of vertebrates worldwide, including humans, domestic animals and wildlife, but has been rarely reported …
REASSEMBLY’s first PhD thesis of the current phase. Timo’s successfully defended his thesis on “Assembly and stability of ecological communties and networks” on June 4th 2025 in the dapartment of Physics at the TU Darmstadt. His great oral defense required him drawing many equations on the black board. Congratulations!
Death-feigning (thanatosis) helps amphibians to avoid being eaten by predators. It has been documented for white-lipped frogs of the genus Leptodactylus among other frogs. Niklas Fuchs, Markus Schönleitner and Mark Oliver Rödel now documented this behavior for the first time for the red-thighed thin-toed frog Leptodactylus rhodomerus, published as a …
Biodiversity metrics are affected by variation in sampling completeness, and notoriously underestimate the species’ diversity in a site. Recently, statistical tools have been developed to estimate and account for biases in sample coverage. These tools allow researchers to compare observed and expected diversity metrics and their change along gradients. This …
“A story of hope and opportunity…”. The non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform MONGABAY published an article on our research findings in the project Reassembly. Journalist Ruth Kamnitzer interviewed us and wrote the following article – worth reading:
Many members of Reassembly actively participated at the 8th European Conference of Tropical Ecology in Amsterdam from 24 to 28 February 2025. Our PhD candidates and postdocs organized a session on tropical ecosystem recovery, presented their work in talks and posters and contributed to lively discussions. And finally, both Malika …
All our scientific research in Reassembly on the recovery of species communities, interactions and ecosystem processes is based on a common design: our ‘chronosequence‘ is a set of 62 plots of different regeneration ages. It includes agricultural plots still in use, secondary forests 0 to over 38 years old, and …
The Northern Eyelash Boa (Tropidophis boulengeri) is endemic to the Chocó and is one of the most spectacular snakes. Especially during rainy nights in the lowland forests, they can be seen inside or near small and large rivers. These snakes often wait motionless with their heads submerged in the water …
