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Introduction
Some of my ongoing projects are presented under:
https://aramob.de
www.spinnen-nationalpark-schwarzwald.de
www.wandering-spiders.net
www.amazonian-butterflies.net
www.smnk.de/en/research/zoology/projects/
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 1999 - present
Publications
Publications (159)
Grassland patches embedded in an urban matrix can harbour a significant number of spider taxa, including rare and endangered species. To further benefit urban biodiversity, Karlsruhe was one of the first cities in Central Europe that adopted biodiversity friendly mowing regimes. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two mowing reg...
In a study originally motivated by the observation of effects of an accidental fire, spiders were sampled with pitfall traps during the vegetation periods 2010, 2012 and 2014 in two burned sites and a neighbouring reference site in the Northern Black Forest. Fire was caused by a motorbike accident at April 25, 2010 and affected approximately one ha...
This a dataset on spiders published as data paper in Arachnologische Mitteilungen. The data are available through arages, BioOne and in a context with other data on spiders from systematic studies at https://aramob.de/de/daten/auswertung/
Although urbanisation is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, its effect on particular invertebrate groups remains ambiguous on local and landscape scales.
We aimed to analyse the effect of urban grassland management on spiders (Araneae) and carabids (Coleoptera: Carabidae), as well as other local and landscape parameters. We investigated 2...
different climatic conditions has led to frequent range expansions and retractions of many species: while thermophilic species
dispersed during warm periods, cold adapted species retracted to cold refugia and vice versa. After the last Pleistocene
cycle many cold adapted taxa found refuges in relict habitats in mountain ranges. One example for such...
The ARAMOB data repository compiles meticulously curated spider community datasets from systematical collections, ensuring a high standard of data quality. These datasets are enriched with crucial methodological data that enable the datasets to be aligned in time and space, facilitating data synthesis across studies, respectively, collections. To s...
The scientific community has been developing and refining digital data standards to ensure that biodiversity data can be easily exchanged between different databases, systems and institutions. However, scientists still face the challenge of effectively analysing this vast amount of data. Variations in the quality, documentation and availability of...
We present a new service of Arachnologische Gesellschaft – data publication in Arachnologische Mitteilungen / Arachnology Letters. A first exemplary dataset is published in this volume. Here we inform about the goals, criteria for acceptance of manuscripts and data, the foreseen editorial procedures, formats, the websites of the digital publication...
We present a taxonomic study with the description of three new species of Chira Peckham & Peckham, 1896: C. stolari sp. nov. (♂♀) from Pernambuco, Brazil; C. ivyatenea sp. nov. (♂♀) from Misiones, Argentina and Santa Catarina, Brazil; and C. hana-garthi sp. nov. (♀) from La Paz, Bolivia; and a tentative identification key for 12 (of 14 known) speci...
A new species of the ant-resembling jumping spider tribe Simonellini, Flurica amazonica sp. nov., is described from the Southwest Amazon forest in Beni Department, Bolivia. The species can be separated from its only congener Flurica sikimira Perger & Rubio, 2022 by the male palp lacking a dorsal tibial apophysis, the ventral tibial apophysis shorte...
The ecological-taxonomic information system ‘Edaphobase’ was developed in a first phase (2009-2013) as a publicly available data warehouse for soil zoological data. In a second project phase (2013-2018), the aim was to review the database with regard to its applicability in applied soil-biodiversity (e.g. monitoring) studies and to further develop...
Blockhalden sind ein seltener und zugleich extremer Lebensraum. Im Hunsrück und anderen Gebieten sind diese letzten Primärlebensräume nur unzureichend untersucht, obwohl sie hochgradig spezialisierte Arten beherbergen können. Wir haben vier Blockhalden im Rahmen einer ersten Erfassung mit Bodenfallen untersucht und dadurch Nachweise von seltenen Sp...
Ein bedeutender Aspekt der Arbeit an Naturkundemuseen besteht im Zusammentragen und in der Bewahrung wissenschaftlicher Sammlungen und darin, die damit verbundenen Daten und Informationen neben der eigenen Nutzung auch anderen Wissenschaftler*innen und der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. Elektronische, serverbasierte Datenbanken im Internet si...
Leistus montanus is a stenotopic ground beetle that predominantly inhabits exposed block fields in mountain ranges. Its regional distribution in Germany is still uncertain, and quantitative descriptions of its habitat are lacking. We studied block fields in two low-mountain ranges, the Black Forest and the Hunsrück, by means of hand collecting or p...
We propose a revision of the spider genus Corythalia C.L. Koch, 1850 (Salticidae: Euophryini) with a revised genus diagnosis based on examination of all species available to us. In this paper we redescribe all previously described species from South America with revised species diagnoses and describe 20 new species from South America (and the nearb...
Article informs on a running project and a website, urban ecology, diversity of arthropods
Surprising first records and new data for rare spider species (Arachnida: Araneae) from screes in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As part of an inventory of spiders in the recently (2014) founded Black Forest National Park, scree slopes were surveyed for the spiny scree wolf spider Acantholycosa norvegica sudetica (L. Koch, 1875) using pitfall traps. I...
The as yet unknown egg sac and clutch of Paratrachelas maculatus (Thorell, 1875) is described together with new records of the species from Germany and Austria. The flat, lens-like egg sacs contained 5 to 7 eggs, each approximately 0.75 mm in diameter, and were camouflaged with substrate by the female. Based on known records and locations, the spec...
• Biodiversity assessments for conservation planning are often restricted to a limited set of species. This is also the case in the context of Natura 2000, where surveys focus strongly on vegetation and selected vertebrate species. Without cross‐taxon congruence, however, this approach does not guarantee that the relevant aspects of biodiversity ar...
The spiny scree wolf spider Acantholycosa norvegica sudetica (L. Koch) (Araneae: Lycosidae) in the northern Black Forest
Screes belong to the last pristine habitats in Central Europe. Several of those are located in the new National Park in the northern Black Forest, but were still not explored scientifically. Seven screes in the Black Forest Nati...
There is a need for reliable and standardized methods to measure functional species traits. Body mass is just one dimension of body size, a most important morphological trait, because it is directly linked with metabolic rate and affected by environmental conditions. However, it is still not widely used due to the difficulties and constraints of di...
The natural history and biology of the recently erected family Viridasiidae is virtually unknown, although
members of Viridasius Simon, 1889 are frequently used in cladistical or toxicological studies. Therefore, we report on
laboratory observations made of the feeding and mating behavior and describe the egg-sac of a species tentatively assigned
t...
First record of Oxyopes lineatus in Germany and comments on further interesting species from Baden-Württemberg
(Araneae: Lycosidae, Oxyopidae, Salticidae, Thomisidae, Trachelidae). The first record of the oxyopid spider Oxyopes lineatus
Latreille,
1806 in Germany is presented together with information on the place of discovery, current distribution...
The data presented here have been collected in the southern part of the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica) in the state of Paraná, Brazil within a bilateral scientific project (SOLOBIOMA). The project aimed to assess the quality of secondary forests of different regeneration stages in comparison with old-growth forests with regard to diversity of soi...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
Figure S1: Database schema. Diversity data in yellow, GIS data in green and Catalogue of Life data in blue. The diversity tables datasource, study, site, measuredtaxon and diversitymeasurement
follow the structure described in ‘Methods’ in the main text and in Hudson et al. (2014): a datasource is associated with one or more study records, each of...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
As part of the German Barcode of Life campaign, over 3500 arachnid specimens have been collected and analyzed: ca. 3300 Araneae and 200 Opiliones, belonging to almost 600 species (median: 4 individuals/species). This covers about 60% of the spider fauna and more than 70% of the harvestmen fauna recorded for Germany. The overwhelming majority of spe...
Haplotype network of the species complex Xysticus audax and X. cristatus, along with their closest relatives.
To guarantee unequivocal morphological determination, only males were included. Small black dots indicate hypothetical haplotypes.
(TIF)
Sequence data for the 3538 analyzed arachnid specimens.
Includes the mite outgroup retrieved from BOLD: BOLDMSACA57112_OG_Acari. FASTA-formatted. See S1 Table for more details on specimens.
(FAS)
Maximum Likelihood tree with bootstrap values.
The analysis was run for 1 million generations and includes 1000 bootstrap replicates. Apart from ID and species name, life stage, sex and coordinates of collecting locality are given. See S1 Table for more details on individual specimens in the tree.
(PDF)
Haplotype network of the species pair Tibellus maritimus and T. oblongus.
Small black dots indicate hypothetical haplotypes.
(TIF)
Field data and IDs for all analyzed specimens.
This table lists collecting date and location (incl. GPS coordinates), collector, taxonomy, identifier, preservation fluid, life stage and sex for the specimens analyzed. Sample IDs in this table correspond to those given in S1 Fig (NJ tree) and S2 Fig (ML tree), as well as in S4 Table ('splits') and S...
List of closest species pairs and most distant congeneric species pairs for spiders.
Statistics, individual by species, for three types of distance comparisons (intraspecific, closest interspecific, largest congeneric): minimal, maximal, mean and median intraspecific genetic distances; closest species (by distance) and minimal, maximal and median d...
List of closest species pairs and most distant congeneric species pairs for harvestmen.
Legend: see caption for S2 Table.
(XLSX)
Lowest interspecific distances, 'lumps'.
This table contains the 731 pairwise comparisons with the lowest allospecific (but congeneric) p-distances in the dataset, ranging from 0 to 5%. 353 comparisons have values below 3%. Specimens are identified through species name and ID (see S1 Table for more details).
(XLSX)
Neighbor Joining tree.
PDF can be searched for species names. Apart from ID and species name, life stage, sex and coordinates of collecting locality are given. See S1 Table for more details on individual specimens in the tree.
(PDF)
Haplotype network of three species of the Pardosa pullata group.
Small black dots indicate hypothetical haplotypes.
(TIF)
Highest intraspecific distances, 'splits'.
This table contains the 352 pairwise comparisons with the highest conspecific p-distances in the dataset, ranging from 10 to 3% (range 5 to 3% given in gray, denoting an 'uncertainty zone' for average species limits in this scenario). 164 comparisons have values above 4%. Specimens are identified through s...
Thousands of scientific projects all over the world produce a huge amount of information. However, beside the published results, most of the gathered data are often not retained or managed on the long term and many aspects (results) of a study remain unknown. Therefore there is strong need for the development of infrastructure to facilitate discove...
In the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, where no more primary forests exist, the value of secondary forests for biodiversity conservation is becoming more and more important. We studied the spiders in a relatively well-preserved region of the Mata Atlântica, where the matrix of the landscape is still forest. We addressed the contribution of different spa...
DNA barcoding has proved to work well for species differentiation across most spider families (Barrett). In Europe several national initiatives are currently underway to collect sequences for most species occurring in their countries. Based on good knowledge of the central European spider fauna and a sufficient number of interested arach-nologists,...
In the framework of the German-Brazilian project SOLOBIOMA ('Soil biota and biogeochemistry in the Southern Atlantic rainforests of Brazil'), soil invertebrates were sampled in different regeneration stages of forest: pastures, young, medium and advanced secondary forests as well as old-growth forests. Thirty-nine study sites were located in two pr...
The BiNHum project is a collective effort of five natural history museums and research collections of the Humboldt-Ring in Germany to collect, centralize and publish collection data in a unified web portal. The portal and the underlying data workflows provide an extensive set of tools to refine and enrich collection data from various sources. It pr...
In many tropical areas of the world, pristine forests have become rare. Nevertheless, due to shifts in the human population the area covered by secondary forests is increasing. These forests may harbor a rich flora and fauna and are considered to be main refuges for species of primary forests. However, this issue is far from clear. To assess the co...
In Waldökosystemen gemäßigter Breiten steigt die Abundanz von Prädatoren mit der Abundanz der Beutetiere, ist also „bottom-up“ reguliert. In nährstoffarmen tropischen Waldökosystemen sollte dieser Effekt noch stärker ausgeprägt sein.
Wir untersuchten die Auswirkungen einer experimentellen Verbesserung der Nahrungsgrundlage und des verfügbaren Raume...
New geographical data for Heterophrynus elaphus (Amblypygi, Phrynidae) represent the first Bolivian record of a
whip spider.
Within a project aiming to improve the preconditions for the protection of the habitat function of soils in Germany, the database Bo-Info was established, in which soil-biological data from permanent soil monitoring sites of several German states as well as from the literature was compiled. Soil-biological data on the occurrence and abundance of ea...
BiNHum (http://wiki.binhum.net) is a project of five natural history museums and research collections representing the Humboldt-Ring: the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe (SMNK), the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart (SMNS), the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn (ZFMK), the Bavarian Natural History Collections in...
InBioVeritas is the approach to generating, assembling and aggregating knowledge, in benefit of preservation and conservation of the biological diversity of the Brazilian coastal rainforests (Mata Atlântica). Experts are being capacitated and action is being fostered, scientific and educational information is being delivered, in order to form InBio...
The competence centre InBioVeritas (www.inbioveritas.net) understands as one of its genuine tasks to reliably provide information about the Brazilian Atlantic Forest for scientists, conservation unit managers, regional decision-makers and the interested public. While an increasing number of scientific studies produces a huge amount of information,...
Within the context of "Quando as ideias se encontram” we present our activities in the project “Amazon Spiders and Butterflies”. The initiative is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) in the "International Museum Fellowship Programm" and enables a Brazilian scientist to work at the State Museum of Natural...
In this contribution the main results of a project (sponsor: German Federal Environment Agency) are compiled. It had two aims: 1. identifying suitable biological indicators (i. e. organism groups) for the assessment of soil quality; 2. esta-blishing reference values for communities in selected bio-topes in order to decide whether a soil did fulfil...
Within a project aiming to improve the preconditions for the protection of the habitat function of soils in Germany, the database ‘Bo-Info’ was established. In this database soil biological data from permanent soil monitoring sites of several German states as well as from the literature were compiled. Soil biological data on the abundance and domin...
The epigeic spider assemblages (Arachnida, Araneae) of dry acid grassland, mat-grass and ruderal vegetation in a nature protection area in the upper Rhine valley. Epigeic spiders were sampled using pitfall traps during one year in an anthropogenic open site within the city of Karlsruhe (Alter Flugplatz Karlsruhe). The area, historically used as a m...
Die Diskussion über einen möglichen Nationalpark im Nordschwarzwald ist derzeit in vollem Gange. Ziel der Nationalpark-Initiative ist es, eine Fläche von mindestens 10.000 Hektar mittel-bis langfristig für den Ablauf natürlicher Prozesse im Wald freizustellen. In einer 30-jährigen Anfangsphase besteht dabei in Teilbereichen die Möglichkeit, bestimm...
A Mata Atlântica abriga a maior parte da população brasileira e é de onde origina a maior parte da riqueza do país. Somente 11,93 % dos remanescentes da cobertura original ainda existente. Este bioma é considerado uma das cinco áreas mais importantes do planeta para a conservação da biodiversidade.Uma das principais ferramentas para possibilitar a...
Due to land use changes, sandy open xerothermic areas in southern Germany have become rare, small, and isolated. Consequently, many xero-, thermo-or psammophile spider species have become restricted in their distribution, and endangered. The remaining open landscapes are priority sites for nature conservation. This also applies to the large (70 ha)...
Within a project aiming to improve the preconditions for the protection of the habitat function of soil in Germany, a database was set up, in which soil biological data from the existing permanent soil monitoring sites of several German states were compiled. Soil biological data included abundance or dominance data for Collembola, Oribatida, Lumbri...
This study was conducted in the Cachoeira River Natural Reserve, in Antonina, Paraná state, Brazil. The main goal was to assess the litter production of secondary tropical rain forests in different sucessional stages (initial, medium and advanced stages). The litter fall was collected every 3 weeks during four years (2004 to 2007), in circular litt...
The composition of the nematode fauna at two different agrosystems (banana monocultures and mixed banana-palmito plantations) was investigated at six study sites on the coastal plain of southern Brazil. Nematode abundance was higher and the number of families was lower (25 compared to 33) in the soil of banana monocultures. The assemblages in the s...
From cardboxes to integrated information systems – The development of zoological databases at the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe
An important aspect of the daily work of Natural History Museums is the management of the scientific collections and the use and mobilisation of the related data. Today, electronic databases, network based dat...
The aim of this project was the improvement of the preconditions for the protection of the habitat function of soil as described in § 2 of the German Federal Soil Protection Act (1998), in particular in two ways: first, suitable biological indicators (i.e. organism groups) for the assessment of soil quality had to be identified. Second, reference v...
The discussion about a possible national park on the Northern Black Forest is currently in full swing. The National Park ini- tiative aims to make available an area of at least 10,000 ha in the medium to long term for the cycle of natural processes in the forest. In an initial phase of 30 years it will be possible to instigate certain forest develo...
The competence center InBioVeritas was founded in 2007 with the vision to integrate competences for ecological and socioeconomic research, sustainable land management and biodiversity conservation in the southern Mata Atlântica. Originating from a successful partnership in a recently terminated Brazilian-German research project (SOLOBIOMA), it is b...
While pitfall trapping is generally accepted as the standard method for sampling carabid beetles, this method has rarely been used in mountain ecosystems, mainly due to the high labour intensity it involves. As part of a research project in the German Alps, we investigated the phenologic appearance of adult carabid beetles in mountain ecosystems al...
Intensive sheep pasturing over many years until 2000 had greatly reduced the floristic diversity of the study area at Alpe Einödsberg. Restoration efforts started in 2001, involving controlled grazing, have already resulted in positive effects on the vegetation structure. Parallel to vegetation monitoring, changes in spider assemblages were investi...
The aim of this work was to evaluate whether terrestrial model ecosystems (TMEs) are a useful tool for the study of the effects of litter quality, soil invertebrates and mineral fertilizer on litter decomposition and plant growth under controlled conditions in the tropics. Forty-eight intact soil cores (17.5-cm diameter, 30-cm length) were taken ou...
Spider assemblages in forests of the southern Mata Atlântica were studied to enhance knowledge of the diversity of these forests and as part of a larger project (www.inbioveritas.net). The aim of the study was the assessment of the potential of secondary forests for the conservation of biodiversity in a situation where altered forests dominate a fr...
Data were collected during the German-Brazilian research program SHIFT (Studies on Human Impact on Forests and Floodplains in the Tropics). The studied sites are situated in Central Amazonia, 30 km outside the city of Manaus, within the experimental area of the Brazilian research institute Embrapa - Amazonia Ocidental (02°53'S, 59°59'W).
Soil/litt...
Kurzfassung Wir berichten über ein abgeschlossenes 6-jähriges Projekt zur Bestandserhebung der Flora und Fauna auf einer beweideten Alpe im Allgäu. Die erhobenen Daten dienen als Grundlage für die Sicherung, Ent-wicklung und Restituierung der stark gefährdeten Lebensgemeinschaften im Natura 2000-Gebiet "All-gäuer Hochalpen". Die vegetationskundlich...
Questions
Question (1)
I think you used the wrong measure for the question of how litter inhabiting animals influence decomposition. To sample only animals from within the litterbags gives a much biased view of the abundance and diversity in litter and soil. And as you used the same mixture of leaves in all samples, you pushed to decrease differences. Actually you got one measure of decomposition rate (mean) under one condition of decomposer community (including the effect of fauna). Studies showing influence of soil fauna on decomposition rates most often use litterbags of a mesh size not allowing certain groups to enter (mesofauna, macrofauna) and analyse the effect. Correlations of decomposition rates with soil fauna abundance and diversity should be based on a broad/reliable sampling of litter and soil fauna under different soil/litter conditions. And still, all these studies have the problem to correlate measures from one point in time, because an abundant fauna will help decompose litter rapidly and when litter becomes sparse decreases due to the lack of space or food. Both variables are in a continuum over the time. I would only correlate measures of abundance and diversity summed or averaged over a longer period with decomposition rates calculated by regression.
