German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research

Mapping groundwater-dependent vegetation in temperate climates on the example of Central Germany

Abstract Groundwater-dependent ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots that provide habitat for specialized species. The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) stresses the importance of identifying and protecting these ecosystems. So far, most studies focus on (semi-)...

Pathbreak: A Biodiversity-Food-Governance Game for experiential reimagination of social-environmental futures

Social dilemmas are central to addressing biodiversity loss, yet tools to make them tangible remain critically scarce. Pathbreak: A Biodiversity-Food-Governance Game provides an engaging and hands-on experience to explore social dilemmas between short- and long-term, individual a...

Land use intensification results in abrupt transitions between extensively and intensively managed grasslands

Abstract Understanding whether land use intensification causes regime shifts (i.e. persistent, large changes in ecosystem states) is of key importance for management, particularly if these shifts occur abruptly as thresholds in land use intensity are crossed. Further, these thres...

High diversity but limited expression of biosynthetic gene clusters in a peatland microbial community

Abstract The in situ relevance of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) remains poorly understood. We apply meta-omics to characterize BGC diversity and activity along a peatland redox gradient. From seven metagenomes, we recover 9,694 BGCs, spanning diverse taxa, most lacking close...

Breeding bird data from the Côa River Basin (Portugal): twenty-six years of change in a Mediterranean landscape in transition

Breeding bird data from the Côa River Basin (Portugal): twenty-six years of change in a Mediterranean landscape in transition This data package brings together standardized breeding-bird transect data collected in the Côa River Basin, north-eastern Portugal, over twenty-six years...

Income sharing for common pool resources with uncertain productivity

Abstract We address the interconnected issues of externalities in the use of a natural common‐pool resource system and adverse effects of environmental uncertainty on risk‐averse resource users. We set up a simple analytical model and derive conditions such that insurance by mean...

Energetic constraints reshape climate-tracking opportunities for large mammals across European protected-area networks

Study overview Protected areas (PAs) remain central to biodiversity conservation, but climate change is shifting temperature conditions beyond the boundaries of many protected sites. Their effectiveness therefore increasingly depends on both the time for which analogous climatic...

Energetic constraints reshape climate-tracking opportunities for large mammals across European protected-area networks

Study overview Protected areas (PAs) remain central to biodiversity conservation, but climate change is shifting temperature conditions beyond the boundaries of many protected sites. Their effectiveness therefore increasingly depends on both the time for which analogous climatic...

Bittersweet dynamics from flowers to fruits: chemometric molecular networking reveals metabolic changes towards reduced toxicity over ontogeny in above-ground Solanum dulcamara chemotypes

Poisonous plants frequently deploy toxic metabolites in an organ- and ontogenetic-specific manner, yet the developmental dynamics of these plant specialised metabolites remain poorly understood. In the Solanaceae, steroidal glycosides (SGs), including steroidal glycoalkaloids (SG...

Fast post-ploughing recovery of traditionally managed semi-natural mountain grasslands in the Romanian Carpathians

Mountain hay meadows are among the most species-rich grassland habitats in Europe, yet many have been historically ploughed and later re-established under traditional management. We examined the legacy effects of past ploughing on plant diversity, vegetation composition, and soil...

GUTchetp: integrated prediction of gut microbial biotransformation profiles using ensemble monolingual and multilingual neural machine translation and enzyme class consistency–reaction similarity

The analysis of the metabolic fate of chemical compounds in the human gut remains a fundamental challenge, as comprehensive experimental characterization across the vast chemical space is infeasible. Moreover, despite progress in computational biology, a comprehensive tool for pr...

Multimodal fertility cues in chimpanzees: how body odours complement sexual swellings

Abstract To attract mating partners, female mammals communicate their reproductive status through one or multiple sensory modalities, providing redundant or complementary information. Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) are an excellent model for studying multimodal communication. Ex...

R Environment for Environmental Sciences: Four Packages Worth Knowing

Conference poster introducing four R packages, renv, pins, testthat and rmarkdown, that together close the practical reproducibility gap between raw data and published results in ecological research. Each panel maps one package onto one failure mode, and a worked example combines...

R Environment for Environmental Sciences: Four Packages Worth Knowing

Conference poster introducing four R packages, renv, pins, testthat and rmarkdown, that together close the practical reproducibility gap between raw data and published results in ecological research. Each panel maps one package onto one failure mode, and a worked example combines...

Sample size shapes metabarcoding-driven biodiversity assessments across body sizes in soil

Understanding how sample size influences biodiversity detection across taxonomic groups differing in body size is critical for designing robust and cost-efficient metabarcoding studies of soil eukaryotes. Using a soil mass gradient (0.25-32 g) combined with a universal 18S rRNA m...

Streamlining Habitats Directive Reporting with Open Biodiversity Data: Evidence for the Nature Directives Stress Test [Policy Brief]

Biodiversity monitoring under Article 17 of the EU Habitats Directive (Council Directive 92/43/EEC) remains inconsistent across European Member States. Although all Member States follow the same reporting framework, national assessments are based on national monitoring programmes...

Unveiling centromeric retrotransposon dynamics through a high-quality rye genome assembly

Abstract Rye ( Secale cereale L.) is an important cereal crop known for its high yield potential and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, its large, repeat-rich, and heterozygous genome has posed challenges for assembly compared to related species such as wheat and...

Reconciling nitrogen fertilization effects on soil nitrification with acidification

Nitrogen (N) fertilization supports nearly half of the global population but disrupts the N cycle. While N addition is assumed to stimulate soil nitrification by increasing substrate supply and nitrifier activity, it may also inhibit nitrification via soil acidification. Resolvin...