In a new contribution, Ugo Diniz and collaborators reveal that tiger moths, often overlooked in pollination research, play a key role as floral visitors. These moths, a highly diverse and abundant group, visit many different plant species, especially those from pioneer plant groups. Even after 40 years of natural forest …
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 …
Measuring proboscis length is an essential trait in pollination studies because it influences a bee’s efficiency as a pollinator. However, Frühholz and colleagues showed that existing allometric models developed mainly for temperate species often lack accuracy when applied to tropical bees, leading to under- or overestimation of proboscis length. They …
Ugo Diniz and collaborators investigated the recovery of abundance and diversity in Megalopta, a genus of nocturnal bees, and how these bees respond to the availability of floral resources across a forest regeneration chronosequence. They found that even after 38 years of forest recovery, Megalopta communities had not fully returned …
Anna Landim and collaborators found that animal communities recover more slowly than plant communities, mainly because remnant trees help maintain plant functional diversity and attract animals early in the regeneration process. Their study estimated that animal functional diversity takes about 40 years to reach levels comparable to those of old-growth …
In an unexpected turn, SP2, which usually focuses on frog communities or soil arthropods, has documented the fish diversity of two water bodies in Canandé. Fish act both as predators and as food resources for several animals, including amphibians. This connection allowed F. Griesbaum and coauthors to describe fish diversity …
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 …
Niklas Fuchs and M.-O. Rödel, in their 2025 paper, provide the first description of juvenile Pristimantis latidiscus. They document an egg-burying behaviour, interpreted as a simple form of parental care. The frogs bury their eggs—presumably as a protective strategy. In experimental manipulations, eggs that were handled every two days (to …
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 …
