Artificial “dummy” fruits are a very useful method to assess the recovery of potential interactions in restored forests. Most attacks on these dummy fruits are by birds (and some by arthropods or mammals), represented by fruit feeding bird species that are important seed dispersers. Pedro Luna and his team applied …
Trees in tropical rainforest generate a structurally very complex habitat, supporting many niches for a huge diversity of species. But how can this structural complexity be quantified? With a terrestrial laser scanner, Martin Ehbrecht and Tim Lehmann studied the three-dimensional vegetation structure along the chronosequence of ‘Reassembly’. In their recent …
In our study site, herpetologists of our Research Unit, led by Mark-Oliver Rödel’s group at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, discovered an individual of a Toad-Headed Pitviper Bothrocophias that was unknown to occur in the lowland Chocó rainforest in Ecuador. Not only its location, but also its taxonomic identity …
Der tropische Regenwald ist derzeit in aller Munde, dank der COP30 in Belem / Brasilien. In diesem Kontext spielt in den Medien auch die Studie eine Rolle, die Anna Landim, Matthias Schleuning und Kolleg:innen im Journal Current Biology publiziert haben zur Regeneration der wichtigen Funktion fruchtausbreitender Vögel (Link). Die Forschenden …
Die Uni Mainz hat eine sehr sehenswerte – von Studierenden initiierte – Vorlesungsreihe zur Klimakrise etabliert, die auch außerhalb der Uni sehr stark wahrgenommen wird (https://zukunft.uni-mainz.de/). Gestern (am 3. Nov. 2025) durfte ich dort vor hunderten Zuhörer:innen die Ergebnisse und Erkenntnisse der “Reassembly” Forschungsgruppe darstellen. Ich habe versucht, einen großen …
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 …
