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.
This 10-min video shows the hypotheses behind, and implementation of, the perturbation – recovery experiment.
Fundación Jocotoco is currently building a new research station – the Chocó Lab – in the Canandé rainforest reserve in Ecuador, thanks to a generous donation. The Research Unit Reassembly and TU Darmstadt are supporting the lab and scientific equipment. See News from Jocotoco and a short video.
