Biodiversity Exploratories

We study protist and insect communities in tree holes at forest sites in three different areas in Germany to elucidate the effects of different forest management intensities of tree-hole community composition and functioning. This project is part of the DFG priority program the  Biodiversity Exploratories, project  MetacommuniTree – Land-use effects on patterns and processes in decomposer metacommunities in tree holes. Relevant publications: Gossner et al. 2016, Petermann et al. 2016, Petermann et al. 2020.

In another project  Disentangling the land-use effects on different dimensions of multitrophic ecosystem structure and functioning we investigate food webs of tree holes and fluxes of energy across the multitrophic communities in response to forest management type and intensity and other environmental and biotic drivers.