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19
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
March 2018 - present
Education
January 2014 - November 2017
September 2011 - September 2013
September 2006 - September 2010
Publications
Publications (19)
Extreme droughts can have long‐lasting effects on forest community dynamics and species interactions. Yet, our understanding of how drought legacy modulates ecological relationships is just unfolding. We tested the hypothesis that leaf chemistry and herbivory show long‐term responses to premature defoliation caused by an extreme drought event in Eu...
Interactions between plants and herbivores are central in most ecosystems, but their strength is highly variable. The amount of variability within a system is thought to influence most aspects of plant-herbivore biology, from ecological stability to plant defense evolution. Our understanding of what influences variability, however, is limited by sp...
European ash, Fraxinus excelsior is facing the double threat of ongoing devastation by the invasive fungal pathogen, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus and the imminent arrival of the non-native emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis. The spread of EAB which is currently moving westwards from European Russia and Ukraine into central Europe, poses an add...
Plants rely on cross‐resistance traits to defend against multiple, phylogenetically distinct enemies. These traits are often the result of long co‐evolutionary histories. Biological invasions can force naïve plants to cope with novel, coincident pests, and pathogens. For example, European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) is substantially threatened by the...
Background and Aims
At the population level, genetic diversity is a key determinant of a tree species’ capacity to cope with stress. However, little is known about the relative importance of the different components of genetic diversity for tree stress responses. We compared how two sources of genetic diversity, genotype and cytotype (i.e. differen...
Climate change is threatening the persistence of many tree species via independent and interactive effects on abiotic and biotic conditions. In addition, changes in temperature, precipitation, and insect attacks can alter the traits of these trees, disrupting communities and ecosystems. For foundation species such as Populus, phytochemical traits a...
Background and Aims : At the population level, genetic diversity is a key determinant of a tree species’ capacity to cope with stress. However, little is known about the relative importance of the different components of genetic diversity for tree stress responses. We compared how two sources of genetic diversity, genotype and cytotype (i.e. differ...
With advancing climate change, tree survival increasingly depends on mechanisms that facilitate coping with multiple environmental stressors. At the population level, genetic diversity is a key determinant of a tree species’ capacity to deal with stress. However, little is known about the relative relevance of the different components of genetic di...
Functional trait variation within individual plants is predicted to have important ecological consequences. However, our understanding of the sources contributing to subindividual trait heterogeneity, and the ramifications thereof, is poor.
In a common garden, we sampled multiple genotypes of mature trembling aspen Populus tremuloides at different...
BACKGROUND
In its invaded regions, Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) is a novel host for the community of resident parasitoids of Drosophila. To attain a high parasitization rate on the novel host, the parasitoids have to locate it and accept it in the presence of other Drosophila hosts. We conducted a laboratory choice experiment and a semifield tria...
Background
Besides fibers, cotton plants also produce a large amount of seeds with a high oil and protein content. The use of these seeds is restricted by their high contents of the terpenoid gossypol, which is harmful to humans and livestock. Using a genetic engineering approach, “Ultra-low gossypol cottonseed” (ULGCS) plants were produced by knoc...
Bt cotton was genetically modified to produce insecticidal proteins targeting Lepidopteran pests and is therefore only minimally affected by caterpillar damage. This could lead to reduced levels of inherent, systemically inducible defensive compounds in Bt cotton which might benefit other important cotton herbivores such as plant bugs. We studied t...
Phytochemical defense responses of plants are often herbivore-specific and can be affected by a herbivore’s feeding mode. However, comprehensive studies documenting the impact of multiple herbivores from different feeding guilds on induced phytochemical responses in distal leaves and its consequences for plant-mediated herbivore interactions are li...
The transfer of plant-produced insecticidal Cry-proteins in the arthropod food web can be affected by a number of environmental and ecological factors. Despite this fact, most studies documenting multitrophic Cry-protein acquisition patterns in arthropods are conducted under controlled conditions whereas the number of field studies is limited. Such...
In its defense against herbivores, cotton (Gossypium sp.) relies in part on the production of a set of inducible, non-volatile terpenoids. Under uniform damage levels, in planta allocation of induced cotton terpenoids has been found to be highest in youngest leaves, supporting assumptions of the optimal defense theory (ODT) which predicts that plan...
Background:
Insect-resistant transgenic plants that express insecticidal Cry proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), are grown on millions of hectares worldwide. While these proteins are efficient in controlling key lepidopteran pests, not all pests are affected and the development of resistance in target pests is always a danger. These short-c...
Cryptic species are phylogenetically diverged taxa that are morphologically indistinguishable and may differ in their ecological and behavioral requirements. This may have important implications for ecosystem services and conservation of biodiversity. We investigated whether two ecologically important cryptic species of the freshwater amphipod Gamm...
In recent decades, the extent of primary forest in tropical regions has decreased drastically, with concurrent increases in the extent of tropical secondary forest. This has important implications for conservation management. We present novel data on species diversity and composition for three taxa (bats, geometrid moths and plants) in forests at t...
Two forest plots that were thrown down by the storm Lothar on 26.12.1999 in the middle of a beech
forest near Habsburg (and were since untouched) and two similar but unaffected plots near Brugg
(AG) were compared between 14.4. and 27.6.2011 with respect to vegetation (with the Braun-Blanquet
method) and nocturnal Macrolepidoptera. The latter were a...