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August 2014 - July 2018
January 2011 - July 2014
January 2010 - December 2011
Publications
Publications (457)
Biodiversity underpins the functional integrity of ecosystems. At present, our understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is essentially based on manipulative experiments. Compelling data at large spatial scales are scarce, especially for river networks. BEF patterns across landscapes are complex because...
Mobile consumers serve as a ubiquitous link, coupling the dynamics and functions of different ecosystems, ranging from diel-vertical migration of zooplankton to seasonal movements of large ungulates. Despite mounting theoretical interest, experimental tests of the effects of consumer mobility in meta-ecosystems are virtually non-existent. Here, we...
Human activities drive a wide range of environmental pressures, including habitat change, pollution and climate change, resulting in unprecedented effects on biodiversity1,2. However, despite decades of research, generalizations on the dimensions and extent of human impacts on biodiversity remain ambiguous. Mixed views persist on the trajectory of...
Organismal abundance tends to decline with increasing body size. Metabolic theory links this size structure with energy use and productivity across levels of biological organization, predicting a size abundance slope of -0.75 that is invariant across environments. We tested whether the size-abundance relationship is robust to a gradient of protist...
Adaptive radiation (AR), a process of rapid speciation and ecomorphological diversification, played an important role in generating past and contemporary global biodiversity. An unsolved question is what maintains high rates of speciation during AR, a phenomenon we call “speciation paradox”. One possible explanation for resolving this paradox is a...
The flow of non-living resources between autotrophic and heterotrophic ecosystems can impact their ecosystem function. However, ecosystem size is similarly known to influence ecological properties and it is uncertain how the size of coupled ecosystems mediates the effect of resource flows. Here, we used a protist experiment to examine how differenc...
Cryptic species are an important part of freshwater biodiversity, yet it remains unclear how these species integrate into communities from local to regional geographic scales. To protect biodiversity, particularly overlooked cryptic species, an accurate understanding of the underlying processes and adequate level of protection is needed.
We analyse...
The contemporary ecological crisis calls for integration and synthesis of ecological data describing the state, change and processes of ecological communities. However, such synthesis depends on the integration of vast amounts of mostly scattered and often hard-to-extract information that is published and dispersed across hundreds of thousands of s...
Temperate streams are subsidized by inputs of leaf litter peaking in fall. Yet, stream communities decompose dead leaves and integrate their energy into the aquatic food web throughout the whole year. Most studies investigating stream decomposition largely overlook long‐term trajectories, which must be understood for an appropriate temporal upscali...
Biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments have established generally positive species richness-productivity relationships in plots of single ecosystem types, typically grassland or forest. However, it remains unclear whether these findings apply in real-world landscapes that resemble a heterogeneous mosaic of different ecosystem and plant type...
Aquatic insects are iconic and ecologically highly relevant inhabitants of riverine ecosystems. They are also often the target of monitoring programs to assess the ecological status of these lotic habitats. Environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques have been widely and successfully implemented to investigate freshwater insects and other macroinvertebrate...
Ecosystem size and spatial resource flows are key factors driving species diversity and ecosystem function. However, the question of whether and how these drivers interact has been largely overlooked. Here, we investigated how ecosystem size asymmetry affects species diversity and function of two‐patch meta‐ecosystems connected through flows of non...
Anthropogenic land-cover changes are among the most pressing global threats to both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, jeopardising biodiversity and the critical connections between these systems. Resource flows and trophic interactions intricately link aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, with terrestrial-derived detritus playing a foundational ro...
Negotiations are underway on the new European Union (EU) Water Directive (1), which will regulate the protection and sustainable use of Europe’s water resources. However, the proposal foregoes environmental quality standards specifically tailored to sensitive groundwater species and fails to require biomonitoring for groundwater ecosystems. Despite...
In the face of escalating global environmental changes, understanding the robustness of ecological networks against sustained species losses is paramount to devising effective biodiversity conservation strategies. To explore the impacts of habitat-specific species losses on large-scale food web robustness, we used a trophic metaweb of 8,846 vertebr...
Human pressures, particularly urbanisation and agricultural expansion, profoundly affect biodiversity by reshaping species and functional trait distributions, with critical consequences for ecosystem resilience and multifunctionality. Yet, the extent and strength of these impacts across diverse taxa and ecosystems remain poorly understood. Here, we...
Climate projections for continental Europe indicate drier summers, increased annual precipitation, and less snowy winters, which are expected to cause shifts in species' distributions. Yet, most regions/countries currently lack comprehensive climate‐driven biodiversity projections across taxonomic groups, challenging effective conservation efforts....
Terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are tightly linked, with direct implications for applied resource management and conservation. It is well known that human land use change and intensification of terrestrial systems can have large impacts on surface freshwater ecosystems. Contrastingly, the study and understanding of such land use impacts on groun...
The processing of organic matter is a central ecosystem function in freshwater ecosystems that allows the integration of terrestrial plant material into aquatic heterotrophic food webs. From an energetic perspective, many temperate aquatic systems fundamentally depend on such allochthonous inputs. Current research established that this central ecos...
Nonliving resources frequently flow across ecosystem boundaries, which can yield networks of spatially coupled ecosystems. Yet the significance of resource flows for ecosystem function has predominantly been understood by studying two or a few coupled ecosystems, overlooking the broader resource flow network and its spatial structure. Here, we inve...
Implementing and optimizing biodiversity monitoring is crucial given the current, worldwide biodiversity decline. Compared to other ecosystems, monitoring of biodiversity is lagging behind in groundwater ecosystems, both because of sparse taxonomic knowledge and methodological constraints. We here assessed temporal variation in the occurrence and a...
Plant–insect trophic systems should be particularly sensitive to processes altering species spatial co‐occurrences, as impacts on one level can cascade effectively through the strong trophic reliance to the other level. Here, we predicted the biogeography of Lepidoptera–plant communities under global‐change scenarios, exploiting spatially resolved...
Freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity are linked through spatial resource flows. Key examples are detrital subsidies from the riparian vegetation that form the base of food webs in small streams. Despite the central role of detritivores in these food webs, the consequences of altered riparian vegetation type and resource availability on their tro...
More than half of the world’s rivers dry up periodically, but our understanding of the biological communities in dry riverbeds remains limited. Specifically, the roles of dispersal, environmental filtering and biotic interactions in driving biodiversity in dry rivers are poorly understood. Here, we conduct a large-scale coordinated survey of patter...
Fluxes of energy, matter, and organisms sustain linkages and functions within and between ecosystems. Yet, how biological drivers influence interactions and functions at the interface between aquatic and terrestrial environments (i.e., aquatic-terrestrial ecosystem functions) locally and across regions has received little attention. To test the rel...
Description: This subset of the LIAS light database focuses on lichens found in Switzerland, providing comprehensive data for ecological research and taxon identification purposes. Not all taxa and only categorical (but 2 numerical) characters (descriptors) of the recorded taxa are covered. Updates and additional data will be published subsequently...
Ecosystem size and resource flows are key factors driving biodiversity and ecosystem function. However, the question ofwhether and how these drivers interact has been largely overlooked. Here, we investigated how ecosystem size asymmetryaffects biodiversity and function of two-patch meta-ecosystems connected through flows of non-living resources. W...
Aim
Groundwater ecosystems harbour a unique biodiversity, but remain poorly studied, mainly due to difficulties in accessibility and imperfect species detection. Consequently, knowledge on the state and change of groundwater biodiversity remains highly deficient. In the context of global warming and excessive groundwater extraction, understanding g...
The collection of environmental DNA (eDNA) and subsequent metabarcoding are useful tools for assessing marine fish biodiversity noninvasively. It is of particular importance to evaluate biodiversity in regions that are hard to access and thus less well studied. Sampling and preservation methods tailored to the specific circumstances are required. A...
Understanding the intricate dynamics of biodiversity within and across riverine ecosystems, influenced by geological history and environmental factors, is crucial for effective conservation and management strategies. Italy, particularly the Ligurian region, harbors diverse freshwater fish communities and populations shaped by unique geological and...
Environmental pressures on species can cascade within food webs and even extend beyond individual ecosystems to interconnected systems at large spatial scales. To facilitate the exploration of these dynamics, we construct a data-based national trophic meta-food web (henceforth metaweb), that includes well-documented vertebrates, invertebrates, and...
Understanding spatial patterns of biodiversity within the context of long‐term climatic shifts is of high importance, particularly in the face of contemporary climate change. In comparison to aboveground taxa, subterranean organisms respond to changing climates with generally much lower dispersal and recolonization potential, yet possible persisten...
Freshwater macroinvertebrates are a diverse group and play key ecological roles, including accelerating nutrient cycling, filtering water, controlling primary producers, and providing food for predators. Their differences in tolerances and short generation times manifest in rapid community responses to change. Macroinvertebrate community compositio...
The genus Niphargus is the most diverse subterranean amphipod genus in the western Palearctic region but, owing to the presence of cryptic species and homoplasy, its taxonomy and biogeographic scenarios are complex, making molecular methods essential to understand its evolution. We conducted a study combining dna -based taxonomy with traditional mo...
The monitoring and management of aquatic ecosystems depend on precise estimates of biodiversity. Metabarcoding analyses of environmental nucleic acids (eNAs), including environmental DNA (eDNA) and environmental RNA (eRNA), have garnered attention for their cost-effective and non-invasive biomonitoring capabilities. However, the accuracy of biodive...
The rapid loss of biodiversity in freshwater systems asks for a robust and spatially explicit understanding of species' occurrences. As two complementing approaches, habitat suitability models provide information about species' potential occurrence, while environmental DNA (eDNA) based assessments provide indication of species' actual occurrence. I...
Anthropogenically forced changes in global freshwater biodiversity demand more efficient monitoring approaches. Consequently, environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis is enabling ecosystem-scale biodiversity assessment, yet the appropriate spatio-temporal resolution of robust biodiversity assessment remains ambiguous. Here, using intensive, spatio-tempora...
Aquatic macroinvertebrates, including many aquatic insect orders, are a diverse and ecologically relevant organismal group yet they are strongly affected by anthropogenic activities. As many of these taxa are highly sensitive to environmental change, they offer a particularly good early warning system for human-induced change, thus leading to their...
Blue-green infrastructure (BGI), combining semi-natural and engineered elements, offers multifaceted benefits like stormwater management, water purification, heat mitigation, and habitat provision. However, current BGI designs prioritize engineering goals, overlooking its ecological potential. Here we advocate for integrating engineering and ecolog...
Molecular tools are an indispensable part of ecology and biodiversity sciences and implemented across all biomes. About a decade ago, the use and implementation of environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect biodiversity signals extracted from environmental samples opened new avenues of research. Initial eDNA research focused on understanding population dyn...
Eutrophication due to nutrient addition can result in major alterations in aquatic ecosystem productivity. Foundation species, individually and interactively, whether present as invasive species or as instruments of ecosystem management and restoration, can have unwanted effects like stabilizing turbid eutrophic states. In this study, we used whole...
Ecological and ecosystem monitoring is rapidly shifting towards using environmental DNA (eDNA) data, particularly in aquatic systems. This approach enables a combined coverage of biodiversity across all major organismal groups and the assessment of ecological indices. Yet, most current approaches are not exploiting the full potential of eDNA data,...
Invasive species are pervasive around the world and have profound impacts on the ecosystem they invade. Invasive species, however, can also have impacts beyond the ecosystem they invade by altering the flow of non-living materials (for example, nutrients or chemicals) or movement of organisms across the boundaries of the invaded ecosystem. Cross-ec...
Moths and other insects are attracted by artificial light sources. This flight-to-light behaviour disrupts their general activity focused on finding resources, such as mating partners, and increases predation risk. It thus has substantial fitness costs. In illuminated urban areas, spindle ermine moths Yponomeuta cagnagella were reported to have evo...
Rivers are an important component of the global carbon cycle and contribute to atmospheric carbon exchange disproportionately to their total surface area. Largely, this is because rivers efficiently mobilize, transport and metabolize terrigenous organic matter (OM). Notably, our knowledge about the magnitude of globally relevant carbon fluxes stron...
The EU Nature Restoration Law represents an important opportunity for freshwater habitat restoration and, consequently, freshwater biodiversity protection. However, a number of challenges must be anticipated in its implementation, which may compromise its success. Some aspects, particularly those relating to freshwater ecosystems, require more clar...
Humans impact terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, yet many broad-scale studies have found no systematic, negative biodiversity changes (for example, decreasing abundance or taxon richness). Here we show that mixed biodiversity responses may arise because community metrics show variable responses to anthropogenic impacts across broad spat...
Ecological and ecosystem monitoring is rapidly shifting towards using environmental DNA (eDNA) data, particularly in aquatic systems. This approach enables a combined coverage of biodiversity across all major organismal groups and the assessment of ecological indices. Yet, most current approaches are not exploiting the full potential of eDNA data,...
Subterranean ecosystems (comprising terrestrial, semi-aquatic, and aquatic components) are increasingly threatened by human activities; however, the current network of surface-protected areas is inadequate to safeguard subterranean biodiversity. Establishing protected areas for subterranean ecosystems is challenging. First, there are technical obst...
Standard and easily accessible cross-thematic spatial databases are key resources in ecological research. In Switzerland, as in many other countries, available data are scattered across computer servers of research institutions and are rarely provided in standard formats (e.g., different extents or projections systems, inconsistent naming conventio...
Groundwater is a vital ecosystem of the global water cycle, hosting unique biodiversity and providing essential services to societies. Despite being the largest unfrozen freshwater resource, in a period of depletion by extraction and pollution, groundwater environments have been repeatedly overlooked in global biodiversity conservation agendas. Dis...
Aim
The spatial‐structural patterns of plant‐insect interaction networks, particularly their associations with landscape‐scale environmental factors, remain poorly understood. We apply data‐driven network constructions that integrate biogeographic and trophic interaction knowledge to uncover how Lepidoptera‐plant networks vary across environmental...
The logistic growth model is one of the most frequently used formalizations of density dependence affecting population growth, persistence and evolution. Ecological and evolutionary theory, and applications to understand population change over time often include this model. However, the assumptions and limitations of this popular model are often no...
Numerous biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) experiments have shown that plant community productivity typically increases with species diversity. In these studies, diversity is generally quantified using metrics of taxonomic, phylogenetic, or functional differences among community members. Research has also shown that the relationships between...
In river systems worldwide, land cover changes have been identified as major drivers of biodiversity change. Quantifying how terrestrial land cover impacts riverine diversity requires local biodiversity assessments. In this study, we investigated the association of terrestrial land cover and the corresponding riverine fish species communities using...
Groundwater is a vast ecosystem harboring a high diversity of specialized taxa. Despite its diversity, groundwater is a still relatively unexplored and threatened ecosystem. Especially the linkage of groundwater with other ecosystems remains largely unknown from the perspective of groundwater fauna. Here, we used citizen science data to get a first...
Freshwater biodiversity is critically affected by human modifications of terrestrial land use and land cover (LULC). Yet, knowledge of the spatial extent and magnitude of LULC-aquatic biodiversity linkages is still surprisingly limited, impeding the implementation of optimal management strategies. Here, we compiled fish diversity data across a 160,...
Freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity is linked through resource flows. For example, subsidies from the riparian vegetation form the base of food webs in small streams. Despite the key role of detritivores in these food webs, consequences of altered resource availability and riparian vegetation type on their trophic strategies are largely unknown...
In times of rapid environmental changes, baseline biodiversity data are crucial for management. In freshwaters, fish inventories are commonly based on the capture and morphological identification of specimens. The sampling of environmental DNA (eDNA) provides an alternative to assess diversity across large catchments. Here, we used extensive histor...
The world’s largest rivers are home to diverse, endemic, and threatened fish species. However, their sheer sizes make large-scale biomonitoring challenging. While environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has become an established monitoring approach in smaller freshwater ecosystems, its suitability for large rivers may be challenged by the sheer exte...
Groundwater is the physically largest freshwater ecosystem, yet one of the least explored habitats on earth, both because of accessing difficulties and the scarcity of the organisms inhabiting it. Here, we demonstrate how a two-fold approach provides complementary information on the occurrence and diversity of groundwater amphipods. Firstly, we use...
South America is home to the highest freshwater fish biodiversity on Earth, and the hotspot of species richness is located in the western Amazon basin. The location of this hotspot is enigmatic, as it is inconsistent with the pattern observed in river systems across the world of increasing species richness towards a river’s mouth. Here we investiga...
Aim: Morphologically cryptic species are an important part of global biodiversity, yet it remains unclear how these species contribute to and integrate into communities at different geographic scales. It is especially unclear at which scales they co-occur, and if and how their ranges overlap. To adequately protect biodiversity, an accurate understa...
The integration of ecosystem processes over large spatial extents is critical to predicting whether and how local and global changes may impact biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Yet, there remains an important gap in meta‐ecosystem models to predict multiple functions (e.g. carbon sequestration, elemental cycling, trophic efficiency) across eco...
Biodiversity loss in river ecosystems is much faster and more severe than in terrestrial systems, and spatial conservation and restoration plans are needed to halt this erosion. Reliable and highly resolved data on the state of and change in biodiversity and species distributions are critical for effective measures. However, high‐resolution maps of...
Monitoring of terrestrial and aquatic species assemblages at large spatial scales based on environmental DNA (eDNA) has the potential to enable evidence-based environmental policymaking. The spatial coverage of eDNA-based studies varies substantially, and the ability of eDNA metabarcoding to capture regional biodiversity remains to be assessed; thu...
Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss¹. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity². Here, using 1,816 time series of fresh...
Molecular techniques using DNA retrieved from community or environmental samples, in particular environmental DNA (eDNA), are becoming increasingly popular for detecting individual species, assessing biodiversity, and quantifying ecological indices. More recently, eDNA has also been proposed as a template for population genetics, and several studie...
The lack of data from non-perennial rivers, which regularly cease to flow and dry up, poses a significant challenge in understanding river biodiversity. These dynamic ecosystems, accounting for over half of the global river network, remain understudied. To address this gap, we conducted a coordinated experiment and a metabarcoding approach on envir...
Species performance depends on the concerted interplay of their functional traits. Natural selection acts on the performance of the species and influences entire suits of interdependent functional traits, thereby driving the evolution of functional diversity (FD) within a clade.
In a given habitat, interdependent functional traits are expected to i...
The current advances of environmental DNA (eDNA) bring profound changes to ecological monitoring and provide unique insights on the biological diversity of ecosystems. The very nature of eDNA data is challenging yet also revolutionizing how biological monitoring information is analysed. In particular, new metrics and approaches should take full adv...
Haplotaxis Hoffmeister, 1843 is a poorly known genus: it is rarely collected because it usually inhabits groundwater, and many species are only known from immature specimens. Even the type species, Haplotaxis gordioides (Hartmann in Oken, 1819) remains poorly defined because of the absence of reference types. Most of the Haplotaxis species have bee...
Subterranean fauna is an important contributor to the global fauna, but it is still understudied, and a large part of its taxonomy is not yet resolved. One species complex with unresolved taxonomy is the groundwater amphipod Niphargus ruffoi, endemic to the Alpine chain. Here, we used new samples from across the Alpine arc to review the taxonomic s...
Introduction
Understanding how species are distributed in space and how they interact with each other is central for scientific and conservation purposes. Species' distributions and interactions result from a complex interplay of local trophic dynamics, dispersal processes, resource availability, and abiotic factors governed by the landscape matrix...
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The ever-increasing threats to riverine ecosystems call for novel approaches for highly resolved biodiversity assessments across taxonomic groups and spatio-temporal scales. Recent advances in the joint use of environmental DNA (eDNA) data and eDNA transport models in rivers (e.g., eDITH) allow uncovering the full structure of riverine biodiversity...
Numerous biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) experiments have shown that plant community productivity typically increases with species diversity. In these studies, diversity is generally quantified using metrics of taxonomic, phylogenetic, or functional differences among community members. Research has also shown that the relationships between...
Abstract Reliable and comparable estimates of biodiversity are the foundation for understanding ecological systems and informing policy and decision‐making, especially in an era of massive anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is at the forefront of technological advances in biodiversity monitoring, and the l...
Human-driven environmental stressors are increasingly threatening species survival and diversity of river systems worldwide. However, it remains unclear how the stressors affect the stability changes across aquatic multiple communities. Here, we used environmental DNA (eDNA) data sets from a human-dominated river in China over 3 years and analyzed...
Dispersal is a central life history trait that affects the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations and communities. The recent use of experimental evolution for the study of dispersal is a promising avenue for demonstrating valuable proofs of concept, bringing insight into alternative dispersal strategies and trade‐offs, and testing the...
As alien invasive species are a key driver of biodiversity loss, understanding patterns of rapidly changing global species compositions depends upon knowledge of invasive species population dynamics and trends at large scales. Within this context, the Ponto-Caspian region is among the most notable donor regions for aquatic invasive species in Europ...
Despite being the most important source of liquid freshwater on the planet, groundwater is severely threatened by climate change, agriculture, or industrial mining. It is thus extensively monitored for pollutants and declines in quantity. The organisms living in groundwater, however, are rarely the target of surveillance programmes and little is kn...
Predicting contemporary and future species distributions is relevant for science and decision making, yet the development of high‐resolution spatial predictions for numerous taxonomic groups and regions is limited by the scalability of available modelling tools. Uniting species distribution modelling (SDM) techniques into one high‐performance compu...
Biological assemblages are the result of dynamic processes that have explicit temporal and spatial dimensions. Although biodiversity patterns can be directly inferred from the structure of these assemblages, an assessment of changes through time and space is needed to understand how organisms initially assembled and how they are responding to local...
Motivation
Aquatic insects comprise 64% of freshwater animal diversity and are widely used as bioindicators to assess water quality impairment and freshwater ecosystem health, as well as to test ecological hypotheses. Despite their importance, a comprehensive, global database of aquatic insect occurrences for mapping freshwater biodiversity in macr...
1. Selecting the best subset of covariates out of a panel of many candidates is a key and highly influential stage of the species distribution modelling process. Yet, there is currently no commonly accepted and widely adopted standard approach by which to perform this selection.
2. We introduce a two-step “embedded” covariate selection procedure a...
The integration of ecosystem processes over large spatial extents is critical to predicting whether and how global changes may impact biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Yet, there remains an important gap in meta-ecosystem models to predict multiple functions (e.g., carbon sequestration, elemental cycling, trophic efficiency) across ecosystem ty...
The integration of ecosystem processes over large spatial extents is critical to predicting whether and how global changes may impact biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Yet, there remains an important gap in meta-ecosystem models to predict multiple functions (e.g., carbon sequestration, elemental cycling, trophic efficiency) across ecosystem ty...
