Anita Weissflog

• Doctor of Philosophy
• PostDoc Position at Yale University

Temperate grasslands exhibit strong spatial and temporal variation in water regimes. Thus, grassland plants experience potentially stressful water regimes, which may influence their tissue silicon (Si) and nitrogen (N) concentrations. Plant Si and N concentrations play important ecological roles in temperate grasslands, for example, by influencing...

Predation can effectively limit insect herbivores with cascading effects on plant community composition and diversity of tropical rainforests. Assessing variation in predation is therefore important to understand the mechanisms structuring complex rainforest ecosystems. Variation in predation with time of day may provide herbivores with temporal en...

Silicon (Si) has a variety of functions in plants, including alleviation of drought and light stress, defense against herbivores and pathogens, and improving plant nutrition. However, for tropical forests our knowledge about the role of silicon and its variation in soils and plants remains limited. To advance our insights into the potential role of...

One explanation for the extraordinarily high tree diversity of tropical lowland forests is that it is maintained by specialized natural enemies such as insect herbivores, which cause distance and density dependent mortality. Insect herbivory could also explain the positive correlation between tree species richness and rainfall if herbivory increase...

Risky in the tropics It is well known that diversity increases toward the tropics. Whether this increase translates into differences in interaction rates among species, however, remains unclear. To simplify the problem, Roslin et al. tested for predation rates by using a single approach involving model caterpillars across six continents. Predator a...

Comparative adult morphology of Coenagrion lunulatum, C. pulchellum, and C. puella in a syntopic situation (Odonata: Coenagrionidae) – Interspecific competition among odonate species for food, mating partner etc. is a common phenomenon. Because morphology mediates species' behaviour and microhabitat use, competition is expected to increase with spe...