Alexandra Schmidt

University of Konstanz | Uni-Konstanz · Department of Biology

Global warming is a major threat to marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, with consequences that are yet largely unknown. To frame these consequences, we need to understand how marine ecosystems respond to warming and related environmental changes. Ecosystem models have proven to be a valuable tool in this respect, but their projections va...

Marginal sea ecosystems, such as the Baltic Sea, are severely affected by anthropogenic pressures, such as climate warming, pollution, and eutrophication, which increased in the course of the past century. Biodiversity monitoring data and assessment of environmental status in such systems have typically been carried out only for the past few decade...

Sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) offers an important opportunity for investigating long‐term community dynamics. Nevertheless, sedaDNA is challenging since DNA is degraded and fragmented over time. Of particular interest for such sedaDNA studies are phytoplankton communities, which are sensitive environmental indicators and important producers in...

Ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) from lake sediments has yielded remarkable insights for the reconstruction of past ecosystems, including suggestions of late survival of extinct species. However, translocation and lateral inflow of DNA in sediments can potentially distort the stratigraphic signal of the DNA. Using three different approaches on two...

Marginal sea ecosystems, such as the Baltic Sea, are severely affected by anthropogenic pressures, such as climate warming, pollution, and eutrophication, which increased in the course of the past century. Biodiversity monitoring data and assessment of environmental status in such systems have typically been carried out only for the past few decade...

Ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) from lake sediments has yielded remarkable insights for the reconstruction of past ecosystems, including suggestions of late survival of extinct species. However, translocation and lateral inflow of DNA in sediments can potentially distort the stratigraphic signal of the DNA. Using three different approaches on two...

Soil invertebrates are among the least understood metazoans on Earth. Thus far, the lack of taxonomically broad and dense genomic resources has made it hard to thoroughly investigate their evolution and ecology. With MetaInvert we provide draft genome assemblies for 232 soil invertebrate species, representing 14 common groups and 94 families. We sh...

The woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is an iconic species of the Eurasian Pleistocene megafauna, which was abundant in Eurasia in the Pleistocene until its demise beginning approximately 10 000 years ago. Despite the early recovery of several specimens from well-known European archaeological sites, including its type specimen (Blumenbach...

Ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) from lake sediments has yielded remarkable insights for the reconstruction of past ecosystems, including suggestions of late survival of extinct species. However, translocation and lateral inflow of DNA in sediments can potentially distort the stratigraphic signal of the DNA. Using three different approaches on two...

Ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) from lake sediments has yielded remarkable insights for the reconstruction of past ecosystems, including suggestions of late survival of extinct species. However, translocation and lateral inflow of DNA in sediments can potentially distort the stratigraphic signal of the DNA. Using three different approaches on two...

The woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is an iconic species of the Eurasian Pleistocene megafauna, which was abundant in Eurasia in the Pleistocene until its demise beginning approximately 10,000 years ago. Despite the early recovery of several specimens from well-known European archaeological sites, including its type specimen (Blumenbach...

Ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) from lake sediments has yielded remarkable insights for the reconstruction of past ecosystems, including suggestions of late survival of extinct species. However, translocation and lateral inflow of DNA in sediments can potentially distort the stratigraphic signal of the DNA. Using three different approaches on two...

Soil invertebrates are among the least understood metazoans on Earth. Thus far, the lack of taxonomically broad and dense genomic resources has made it hard to thoroughly investigate their evolution and ecology. With MetaInvert we provide draft genome assemblies for 232 soil invertebrate species, representing 14 common groups and 94 families. We sh...

Soil microbial diversity affects ecosystem functioning and global biogeochemical cycles. Soil bacterial communities catalyze a diversity of biogeochemical reactions and have thus sparked considerable scientific interest. One driver of bacterial community dynamics in natural ecosystems has so far been largely neglected: the predator‐prey interaction...

Metagenomics – shotgun sequencing of all DNA fragments from a community DNA extract – is routinely used to describe the composition, structure, and function of microorganism communities. Advances in DNA sequencing and the availability of genome databases increasingly allow the use of shotgun metagenomics on eukaryotic communities. Metagenomics offe...

Soil microbial diversity affects ecosystem functioning and global biogeochemical cycles. Soil bacterial communities catalyze a diversity of biogeochemical reactions and have thus sparked considerable scientific interest. One driver of bacterial community dynamics in natural ecosystems has so far been largely neglected: the predator-prey interaction...

Metagenomics - shotgun sequencing of all DNA fragments from a community DNA extract - is routinely used to describe the composition, structure and function of microorganism communities. Advances in DNA sequencing and the availability of genome databases increasingly allow the use of shotgun metagenomics on eukaryotic communities. Metagenomics offer...

Metagenomics - shotgun sequencing of all DNA fragments from a community DNA extract - is routinely used to describe the composition, structure and function of microorganism communities. Advances in DNA sequencing and the availability of genome databases increasingly allow the use of shotgun metagenomics on eukaryotic communities. Metagenomics offer...