Press release

The question of the causes of species extinction confronts science with complex tasks. Dr Sarah Redlich from the Biocentre on the challenge of creating a study design.

Urbanisation appears to be another key factor for insect decline. This is shown by a study in which the impact of climate and land use on insects was disentangled for the first time.

The higher the biological diversity in an ecosystem, the better the important processes there function. A heterogeneous environment promotes this effect, while intensive land use weakens it, as a new study shows.

The newly funded EU Horizon 2020 project Safeguard will address the decline of wild pollinators, its effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services, and options to restore pollinator diversity.

The time deadwood in forests needs to decompose depends on climate as well as on fungi and insects. Researchers have now quantified the contribution of deadwood to the global carbon cycle.

In an exceptionally broad and elaborate study, biologists from the University of Würzburg investigated the biodiversity of flowering fields planted as part of agri-environmental schemes.

Please do not disturb: After forest fires, bark beetle infestations and other damage, the affected forests should not be cleared. Researchers report this in the journal Nature Communications.

An oak forest in Lower Franconia has caused a small sensation in zoology: A moth was discovered there that was considered extinct.

Honeybees use their waggle dance to tell their conspecifics where to find food. Depending on the honeybee species, there are different dance dialects, as a German-Indian research team has shown.

Dead wood plays an important role for biodiversity in forests. The Ecological Station of the University of Würzburg and the Forest Enterprise Ebrach conduct a joint research project on this topic that has been recently granted with 500,000 euros.

The forests in Europe provide habitat for around 80,000 colonies of wild honeybees. That is why more attention should be paid to preserving the nesting sites for these threatened insects, according to researchers.

If ecosystems are disturbed, this can trigger the extinction of species. For her research in this field, the journal Ecography awards biologist Ludmilla Figueiredo with a prize.

Their work is most frequently cited in publications of other scientists. Eight researchers from the University of Würzburg have therefore been added to the Highly Cited Researchers 2019 List

With freely available radar data from satellites, biodiversity in forests can be analysed very well. In Nature Communications, researchers report that biodiversity even of tiny insects can be reliably modelled from space.

Around 20 percent of the world's agricultural areas yields less than it did 20 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO, humans are the culprit: we have not done enough to protect biodiversity.