Birgit Christiane Schlick-SteinerUniversity of Innsbruck | UIBK · Institute of Ecology
Birgit Christiane Schlick-Steiner
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Publications (255)
European harvester ants, Messor species, are important ecosystem engineers. In Catalonia (Spain), among others, the three species Messor barbarus, M. bouvieri, and M. capitatus occur. At one Catalan site, a cluster of nest samples of unknown identity was found, raising the possibility of either a hybrid lineage or a currently unexplored species in...
Background
The growing global population increases the demand for protein, while the management of organic waste is becoming more challenging. Alternative protein sources are needed to reduce the negative environmental impact of food production. Lately, the black soldier fly (BSF) has been proposed as an ideal animal protein substitute due to its a...
Aggression has multiple benefits and is often coupled with other behaviors ("behavioral syndromes"). The level of aggressiveness is influenced by an adaptive benefit-cost ratio suggesting that benefits should outweigh the costs of aggression. Here, we assess if several behaviors are coupled in two behaviorally different populations (aggressive, pea...
Genetic monitoring has become a popular instrument in the conservation of endangered species, allowing to estimate size and genetic structure of wild populations. Long-term monitoring projects are essential to recognize demographic changes and impact of human activities. Since 2011, an extensive monitoring project on the population size and trends,...
Reconstruction of species histories is a central aspect of evolutionary biology. Patterns of genetic variation within and among populations can be leveraged to elucidate evolutionary processes and demographic histories. However, interpreting genetic signatures and unraveling the contributing processes can be challenging, in particular for non-model...
Population size is an important parameter to monitor for species conservation and management. This is especially important for rare and endangered species, as declines can give information about anthropogenic impacts and the need for new conservation measures. To estimate population size, various methods of analysis can be used, for which sample si...
Standardised assays are often used to characterise aggression in animals. In ants,such assays can be applied at several organisational levels (e.g., colony, population) and at specific times during the season. However, whether the behaviour differs at these levels and changes over a few weeks remains largely unexplored. Here, six colonies from the...
Wolbachia are known to cause reproductive manipulations and in some arthropod species, Wolbachia were reported to cause changes in gut microbiome. However, the effects of Wolbachia bacteria on the microbiomes of their hosts, including Drosophila flies, have not been fully accessed. Here, we checked the bacterial microbiome in guts of Wolbachia-unin...
The ant Plagiolepis taurica Santschi, 1920 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) is a typical species of the Eurasian steppes, a large grassland dominated biome that stretches continuously from Central Asia to Eastern Europe and is represented by disjunct outposts also in Central and Western Europe. The extent of this biome has been influenced by the Pleistoce...
Behaviour is a response of organisms to internal and external stimuli and comprises various activities such as searching for food. Aggression is important in such activities improving the chances of winning competition for food, but animals differ in their level of aggression. This behavioural plasticity allows individuals to respond to environment...
Macro-invertebrates are important components of soil ecosystems as they provide a wide range of crucial functions and ecosystem services. Knowledge on their distribution in mountain soils is scarce despite the importance of such soils for people living in mountain regions as well as downstream. The present dataset contains records on soil macro-inv...
In our recently published study in Science of the Total Environment, we used a systematic literature search to investigate the current state of research of persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals (PBTs) and insects. We found a distinct increase of human, animal, and vertebrate publications related to PBTs in the early 1990s but did not iden...
Antibiotics, such as tetracycline, have been frequently used to cure arthropods of Wolbachia endosymbionts. After the symbionts have been removed, the hosts must recover for some generations from the side effects of the antibiotics. However, most studies do not assess the direct and indirect longer‐term effects of antibiotics used to remove Wolbach...
Quaternary climatic oscillations had a large impact on European biogeography. Alternation of cold and warm stages caused recurrent glaciations, massive vegetation shifts, and large-scale range alterations in many species. The Eurasian steppe biome and its grasslands are a noteworthy example; they underwent climate-driven, large-scale contractions d...
The ongoing decline in the biomass, abundance, and species number of insects is an established fact. Persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals (PBTs) – persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and, in the case of our study, mercury (Hg) – play an important role, but their effect on insect populations is insufficiently investigated. Here, the cur...
Hybridization and introgression are recognized as an important source of variation that influence adaptive processes; both phenomena are frequent in the genus Daphnia, a keystone zooplankton taxon in freshwater ecosystems that comprises several species complexes. To investigate genome-wide consequences of introgression between species, we provide h...
Reconstruction of species histories is a central aspect of evolutionary biology. Patterns of genetic variation within and among populations can be leveraged to elucidate evolutionary processes and demographic histories. However, interpreting genetic signatures and unraveling the contributing processes can be challenging, in particular for non-model...
• Coenagrion hylas (Trybom, 1899) has a very limited distribution in Europe, lives in very small, isolated populations, has rather specialised habitat demands, and is regarded as the rarest damselfly of Europe.
• Using a combination of capture-mark-recapture and population genetics, we aimed to evaluate the state of the populations in the Tyrolean...
Two types of permanent social parasitism, dulosis and inquilinism, are well known in the ant genus Tetramorium Mayr, 1855. In contrast, temporary social parasitism has never been reported for these ants. A recently detected mixed colony of Tetramorium immigrans Santschi, 1927 and the putative social parasite Tetramorium aspina Wagner et al., 2018 m...
Wolbachia are maternally inherited endosymbionts that infect nearly half of all arthropod species. Wolbachia manipulate their hosts to maximize their transmission, but they can also provide benefits such as nutrients and resistance against viruses to their hosts. The Wolbachia strain w Mel was recently found to increase locomotor activities and pos...
Quaternary climatic oscillations had a large impact on European biogeography. Alternation of cold and warm stages caused recurrent glaciations, massive vegetation shifts and large-scale range alterations in many species. The Eurasian steppe biome and its grasslands are a noteworthy example; they underwent climate-driven, large-scale contractions du...
The systematics of the dipteran family Sciaridae is based mainly on morphological characters and has remained quite controversial. In this study, we used two mitochondrial DNA markers (CO1, 16S) and a nuclear one (28S) to take a glimpse into phylogenetic relationships of part of the North and Central European Sciaridae. A total of 91 species from 1...
Invasive species are a global threat to biodiversity, and understanding their history and biology is a major goal of invasion biology. Population‐genetic approaches allow insights into these features, as population structure is shaped by factors such as invasion history (number, origin, and age of introductions) and life‐history traits (e.g., matin...
Antibiotics, such as tetracycline, has been frequently used to cure endosymbiont Wolbachia in arthropods. After the symbionts had been removed, the hosts must be waited for some generations to recover from side effects of the antibiotics. Knowledge of potential long-term effects of the antibiotic is important. Here, we treated Drosophila nigrospars...
Rapid anthropogenic climate change and progressing habitat degradation are considered top threats to biodiversity. The employment of demanding umbrella species as indicators for ecosystem health is a popular and cost-effective strategy that facilitates continuous monitoring and evaluation within a long-term conservation management scheme. The Weste...
Multi-locus genetic data are pivotal in phylogenetics. Today, high-throughput sequencing (HTS) allows scientists to generate an unprecedented amount of such data from any organism. However, HTS is resource intense and may not be accessible to wide parts of the scientific community. In phylogeography, the use of HTS has concentrated on a few taxonom...
Hybridization and introgression are recognized as an important source of variation that influence adaptive processes; both phenomena are frequent in the genus Daphnia, a keystone zooplankton taxon in freshwater ecosystems that comprises several species complexes. To investigate genome-wide consequences of introgression between species, we provide h...
Canteens represent an essential food supply hub for educational institutions, companies, and business parks. Many people in these locations rely on a guaranteed service with consistent quality. It is an ongoing challenge to satisfy the demand for sufficient serving numbers, portion sizes, and menu variations to cover food intolerances and different...
An organism’s gut microbiome handles most of the metabolic processes associated with food intake and digestion but can also strongly affect health and behavior. A stable microbial core community in the gut provides general metabolic competences for substrate degradation and is robust against extrinsic disturbances like changing diets or pathogens....
The European steppes and their biota have been hypothesized to be either young remnants of the Pleistocene steppe belt or, alternatively, to represent relicts of long-term persisting populations; both scenarios directly bear on nature conservation priorities. Here, we evaluate the conservation value of threatened disjunct steppic grassland habitats...
The European steppes and their biota have been hypothesized to be either young remnants of the Pleistocene steppe belt or, alternatively, to represent relicts of long-term persisting populations; both scenarios directly bear on nature conservation priorities. Here, we evaluate the conservation value of threatened disjunct steppic grassland habitats...
Wolbachia, intracellular endosymbionts, are estimated to infect about half of all arthropod species. These bacteria manipulate their hosts in various ways for their maximum benefits. The rising global temperature may accelerate species migration, and thus, horizontal transfer of Wolbachia may occur across species previously not in contact. We trans...
Understanding how organisms adapt to extreme environments is fundamental and can provide insightful case studies for both evolutionary biology and climate-change biology. Here, we take advantage of the vast diversity of lifestyles in ants to identify genomic signatures of adaptation to extreme habitats such as high altitude. We hypothesised two par...
Wolbachia , maternally inherited endosymbionts, infect nearly half of all arthropod species. Wolbachia manipulate their hosts to maximize their transmission, but they can also provide benefits such as nutrients and resistance to viruses for their hosts. The Wolbachia strain w Mel was recently found to increase locomotor activities and possibly trig...
Wolbachia , intracellular endosymbionts, are estimated to infect about half of all arthropod species. These bacteria manipulate their hosts in various ways for their maximum benefits. The rising global temperature may accelerate species migration and, thus, horizontal transfer of Wolbachia may occur across species previously not in contact. We tran...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197896.].
A worker-like female of Myrmica sabuleti (Meinert, 1861), pitfall-trapped near Jena, Germany, in late summer 2016, was infested by five postparasitic juvenile mermithids. They poked out of the ant´s gaster as a trail of seven filaments of various lengths. Apart from its swollen gaster, the ant differed from conspecifics in several morphometric para...
Wolbachia (Alphaproteobacteria) are the most widespread endosymbionts of arthropods, manipulating their hosts by various means to maximize the number of host individuals infected. Based on quantitative analyses of the published literature from Web of Science® and of DNA sequences of arthropod-hosted Wolbachia from GenBank, we made plausible that le...
Climate warming is threatening biodiversity worldwide. Climate specialists such as alpine species are especially likely to be vulnerable. Adaptation by rapid evolution is the only long-term option for survival of many species, but the adaptive evolutionary potential of heat resistance has not been assessed in an alpine invertebrate. Here, we show t...
Understanding how organisms adapt to extreme environment is important in terms of both evolutionary biology and climate-change biology. Despite this and the increased number of sequenced arthropod genomes, little effort has been made to understand how cold-tolerant animals evolve. In this study, we take advantage of the impressive diversity of life...
Animal behaviour often is characterised by standardised assays. In social insects such as ants, behaviour assays are for example used to characterise aggressive and peaceful behaviour. Such assays differ in the number of individuals, the duration and place of assays, and the scoring scales. Also the behaviour indices used to summarise the results d...
Aims: Litter decomposition patterns, non-additive effects, and spectral data of abundant alpine leaf litters were assessed in litterbag experiments containing single species and mixtures. We tested if low-quality shrub litter decomposes faster in mixtures with high-quality litter and if predictions on decomposed litter using spectral data are feasi...
Ectotherms are sensitive to temperature change, and predictions about a species' vulnerability to thermal change require an understanding of its thermal responses. The preferred temperature in laboratory assays is a widely used measure commonly taken as an indicator of the temperature at which ectotherms' physiological functions are optimised. The...
Alpine pastureland is increasingly abandoned, leading to shrub encroachment and to the accumulation of low-quality litter. Alpine key decomposers such as earthworms were found to feed on both low- and high-quality litter, but little is known how this might affect their life history traits.
To fill this gap of knowledge, we conducted a laboratory ex...
The range of hosts exploited by a parasite is determined by several factors, including host availability, infectivity and exploitability. Each of these can be the target of natural selection on both host and parasite, which will determine the local outcome of interactions, and potentially lead to coevolution. However, geographical variation in host...
Cryptic species are morphologically very similar to each other. To what extent stasis or convergence causes crypsis and whether ecology influences the evolution of crypsis has remained unclear. The Tetramorium caespitum complex is one of the most intricate examples of cryptic species in ants. Here, we test three hypotheses concerning the evolution...
Hermetia illucens (L.), the Black Soldier Fly, has received increased scientific attention for its potential in circular waste management where larvae can serve as feedstuff for livestock and for biodiesel production. The flies occur naturally in (sub)-tropical and warm-temperate climates, and their mating depends on space and sunlight. Small-scale...
Interspecific variation in life-history traits and physiological limits can be linked to the environmental conditions species experience, including climatic conditions. As alpine environments are particularly vulnerable under climate change, we focus on the montane-alpine fly Drosophila nigrosparsa. Here, we characterized some of its life-history t...
Summary: Currently, 133 free-living and ten indoor ant species have been reliably recorded for Austria. The records of another seven species are doubtful.
Key Words: Ants, Formicidae, Austria, Checklist, Biodiversity (Steiner F.M., Ambach J., Glaser F., Wagner H.C., Müller J., Schlick-Steiner B. C. (2017): Checklisten der Fauna Österreichs, No. 9....
Small, isolated populations are constantly threatened by loss of genetic diversity due to drift. Such situations are found, for instance, in laboratory culturing. In guarding against diversity loss, monitoring of potential changes in population structure is paramount; this monitoring is most often achieved using microsatellite markers, which can be...
Species delimitation is fundamental for many biological studies; its importance extends from regional faunistics over behavioral research to the reconstruction of evolutionary history. However, species delimitation in the Palearctic Tetramorium caespitum species complex (formerly Tetramorium caespitum / impurum complex) has stayed ambiguous over a...
Mountain areas cover about 12.3% of the global terrestrial land area and hold up approximately one-quarter of the known species, considering them as biodiversity hot spots. The Alps are the most prominent mountain area in Europe, and probably the most-studied. However, high elevation (and also high latitude) ecosystems were neglected worldwide by s...