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 …
A very lively video summarizes the key questions and methods in our subproject about predator-prey interactions, featuring Karla Neira, Mark-Oliver Rödel and countless colorful or brownish frogs as the main actors. Well worth watching! And… an exciting podcast about their work is also available in the Museum’s “Beats and bones” …
In our study area – the lowland Chocó rainforest – three monkey species act as important dispersers for tree seeds. Brown-headed spider monkeys climb skillfully through the tree canopies and live almost entirely on fruits. Mantled howlers shape the soundscape and eat both leaves and fruits. And Ecuadorian white-fronted capuchins …
How quickly does the understory vegetation and litter layer recover following complete removal? This is the main question addressed in our perturbation-recovery experiment in 10 x 10 m subplots (P-REX). After nine months, the litter layer achieved a similar extent as an undisturbed forest patch, and many new tree seedlings …
We had a very fruitful workshop in the National Park Bayerischer Wald (link) in October 5-7th 2022. After a Kick-Off Meeting last year (Palmengarten Frankfurt) and a workshop on data management and networks in the new Chocó lab in March 2022, this has been our third actual reassembly of the …
You don’t often see velvet worms (Onychophora)! Arianna is currently sorting the arthropods from litter extractions of the Reassembly plots. We got excited to see the first velvet worm in this sample. Only few onychophorans are known from Ecuador so far. Fernando Villagomez immediately looked for some morphological details and …
We are Arianna (chemist) and Karla (biologist) and we believe that fieldwork goes beyond the scientific aspect, as it necessarily involves social engagement with local communities as well. Within the past six months living in Canandé, we have learned from the people of Hoja Blanca and La Yuca (the villages …
Our ambitious perturbation experiment was an enormous, unexpected effort – on a total of 30 plots. Four 10 x 10 m treatments had to be marked per plot, two of them fenced, vegetation and litter was removed from two treatments, and the amount removed was quantified. Seed/litter traps were installed, …
First exciting network results of our first Bachelor student in Reassembly, Jan Johann (in SP6). His analysis supports one of our key hypotheses: networks become more complex when forest recover, shown by an increase in the exponential Shannon diversity of links (eH2). Here, the trophic network is represented the distribution …
Four snapshots from a wildlife camera campaign across our study plots performed by the Team Fabrikschleichach. A puma (Puma concolor), jaguar (Panthera onca), tayra (Eira barbara) and an ozelot (Leopardus pardalis) walked through the forest plots in November 2021.
