Nina Farwig

Philipps University of Marburg | PUM

1. Co-occurring and simultaneously fruiting plant species may either compete for dispersal by shared frugivores, or enhance each other's dispersal through joint attraction of frugivores. While competitive plant–plant interactions are expected to cause the evolutionary divergence of fruit phenologies, facilitative interactions are assumed to promote...

Networks of species interactions promote biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services. These networks have traditionally been studied in isolation, but species are commonly involved in multiple, diverse types of interaction. Therefore, whether different types of species interaction networks coupled through shared species show idiosyncratic...

Large-scale modifications of natural ecosystems lead to mosaics of natural, semi-natural and intensively used habitats. To improve communication in conservation planning, managers and other stakeholders need spatially explicit projections at the landscape scale of future biodiversity under different land-use scenarios. For that purpose, we visualiz...

Functional diversity ( FD ) of pollinators can increase plant reproductive output and the stability of plant‐pollinator communities. Yet, in times of world‐wide pollinator declines, effects of global change on pollinator FD remain poorly understood. Loss of natural habitat and exotic plant invasions are two major drivers of global change that parti...

The continuing spread of exotic plants and increasing human land-use are two major drivers of global change threatening ecosystems, species and their interactions. Separate effects of these two drivers on plant-pollinator interactions have been thoroughly studied, but we still lack an understanding of combined and potential interactive effects. In...

The global demand for renewable energy has led to an expansion of wind energy production at forested sites. The deployment and operation of turbines requires the clearing of forest areas, resulting in significant habitat changes. To assess the consequences of these changes for forest-associated bats, we measured the acoustic activity of three forag...

In tropical forests, herbivorous arthropods remove between 7% up to 48% of leaf area, which has forced plants to evolve defense strategies. These strategies influence the palatability of leaves. Palatability, which reflects a syndrome of leaf traits, in turn influences both the abundance and the mean body mass not only of particular arthropod taxa...

Illustration outreaching the main results of our study published in PNAS: Juan P. González-Varo, Jörg Albrecht, Juan M. Arroyo, Rafael S. Bueno, Tamara Burgos, Gema Escribano-Ávila, Nina Farwig, Daniel García, Juan C. Illera, Pedro Jordano, Przemysław Kurek, Sascha Rösner, Emilio Virgós & William J. Sutherland (2023) Frugivore-mediated seed disper...

Seed dispersal by frugivores is a fundamental function for plant community dynamics in fragmented landscapes, where forest remnants are typically embedded in a matrix of anthropogenic habitats. Frugivores can mediate both connectivity among forest remnants and plant colonization of the matrix. However, it remains poorly understood how frugivore com...

Illustration outreaching the main results of our study published in PNAS: Juan P. González-Varo, Jörg Albrecht, Juan M. Arroyo, Rafael S. Bueno, Tamara Burgos, Gema Escribano-Ávila, Nina Farwig, Daniel García, Juan C. Illera, Pedro Jordano, Przemysław Kurek, Sascha Rösner, Emilio Virgós & William J. Sutherland (2023) Frugivore-mediated seed dispers...

The distribution of plant traits is related to abiotic and biotic factors, but it is unknown whether different types of plant traits respond similarly to these factors. We simultaneously studied seed, fruit and leaf traits and their associations with abiotic and biotic factors for tree communities in the tropical mountains of southern Ecuador. We m...

Aim Many studies demonstrate that climate limits invertebrates along tropical elevational gradients, but we have only a rudimentary understanding of the role of nutrient limitation and climatic seasonality. Here we examined the relationships between ant community structure, nutrient use and season along three undisturbed elevational gradients, each...

Human activities, directly and indirectly, impact ecological engineering activities of subterranean rodents. As engineering activities of burrowing rodents are affected by, and reciprocally affect vegetation cover via feeding, burrowing and mound building, human influence such as settlements and livestock grazing, could have cascading effects on bi...

Disturbances from rodent engineering and human activities profoundly impact ecosystem structure and functioning. While we know that disturbances modulate plant communities, it is important to comprehend the mechanisms through which rodent and human disturbances modulate the functional trait composition of vegetation communities. Here, we evaluated...

Immer mehr Windenergieanlagen (WEA) werden in Deutschland in Wirtschaftswäldern errichtet. Bisher ist wenig darüber bekannt, ob WEA in Wäldern häufige Vögel verdrängen, deren Schutz beim Bau von WEA geringe Priorität hat. Um diese Wissenslücke zu füllen, haben wir mittels Punkt-Stopp-Zählungen Singvögel in unterschiedlichen Distanzen zu WEA in 24 W...

Introduction Parasites play important roles in ecosystems. Through their interactions with host and vector species, they are capable of changing the behavior and population dynamics of their host species, and the shape of entire communities. Over the past years, many studies have acknowledged the role of parasitism for host populations and communit...

Urban forests are highly fragmented in mega-cites, acting as islands in terms of preserving species diversity. To maintain the ecological services of urban forests, management measures such as reforestation have been implemented, which might have a long-term effect on biodiversity. To understand how fragmentation and reforestation affect the natura...

Due to their limited dispersal ability, fossorial species with predominantly belowground activity usually show increased levels of population subdivision across relatively small spatial scales. This may be exacerbated in harsh mountain ecosystems, where landscape geomorphology limits species' dispersal ability and leads to small effective populatio...

Vertical stratification is a key feature of tropical forests and structures plant–frugivore interactions. However, it is unclear whether vertical differences in plant‐frugivore interactions are due to differences among strata in plant community composition or inherent preferences of frugivores for specific strata. To test this, we observed fruit re...

Mutualistic interactions are by definition beneficial for each contributing partner. However, it is insufficiently understood how mutualistic interactions influence partners throughout their lives. Here, we used animal species-explicit, microhabitat-structured integral projection models to quantify the effect of seed dispersal by 20 animal species...

Bioturbating animals can affect physical and chemical soil properties on near-surface soil by either foraging for food or constructing suitable habitats. Thereby, bioturbation can influence the soil texture either sorting or mixing the different grain sizes clay, silt and sand during burrowing. Additionally, bioturbating animals can increase the ma...

Wind turbines are increasingly being installed in forests, which can lead to land use disputes between climate mitigation efforts and nature conservation. Environmental impact assessments precede the construction of wind turbines to ensure that wind turbines are installed only in managed or degraded forests that are of potentially low value for con...

In our study, we included bioturbation into a soil erosion model and ran the model for several years under two conditions: With and without bioturbation. We validated the model using several sediment fences in the field. We estimated the modelled sediment redistribution and surface runoff and the impact of bioturbation on these along a climate grad...

The rapid development of wind energy in southern Africa represents an additional threat to the already fragile populations of African vultures. The distribution of the Vulnerable Cape Vulture Gyps coprotheres overlaps considerably with wind energy development areas in South Africa, creating conflicts that can hinder both vulture conservation and su...

Zusammenfassung. Um Wälder und ihre Ökosystemleistungen auch unter den Bedingungen des globalen Wandels zu erhalten und nachhaltig nutzen zu können, wird im Kontext der geplanten Novellierung des Bundeswaldgesetzes unter dem Begriff der Guten fachlichen Praxis (GfP) die Konkretisierung von Mindeststandards für die Waldwirtschaft diskutiert. Dies t...

Burrowing animals influence surface microtopography and hillslope sediment redistribution, but changes often remain undetected due to a lack of automated high-resolution field monitoring techniques. In this study, we present a new approach to quantify microtopographic variations and surface changes caused by burrowing animals and rainfall-driven er...

The most basic behavioural states of animals can be described as active or passive. While high‐resolution observations of activity patterns can provide insights into the ecology of animal species, few methods are able to measure the activity of individuals of small taxa in their natural environment. We present a novel approach in which a combinatio...

The goal of adapting forests to climate change should be the provision of the manifold ecosystem services of forests for current and future generations. This requires transforming not only forests themselves, but also enterprises, institutions, and our use of ecosystem services. In most cases, because of the rapid pace of climate change, this can o...

1. Keystone species are disproportionately important for ecosystem functioning. While all species engage in multiple interaction types with other species, keystone species importance is often defined based on a single dimension of their Eltonian niche, i.e., one type of interaction (e.g., keystone predator). It remains unclear whether the importanc...

To effectively protect European species such as the Red Kite, a detailed understanding of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic influences, especially the causes of mortality and spatial context, is required. Modern telemetry techniques are increasingly used to obtain high-resolution information on spatial use. However, collecting such data can be di...

Quantifying animal movements is necessary for answering a wide array of research questions in ecology and conservation biology. Consequently, ecologists have made considerable efforts to identify the best way to estimate an animal’s home range, and many methods of estimating home ranges have arisen over the past half century. Most of these methods...

We present Bird@Edge, an Edge AI system for recognizing bird species in audio recordings to support real-time biodiversity monitoring. Bird@Edge is based on embedded edge devices operating in a distributed system to enable efficient, continuous evaluation of soundscapes recorded in forests. Multiple ESP32-based microphones (called Bird@Edge Mics) s...

Abstract Subterranean animals act as ecosystem engineers, for example, through soil perturbation and herbivory, shaping their environments worldwide. As the occurrence of animals is often linked to above‐ground features such as plant species composition or landscape textures, satellite‐based remote sensing approaches can be used to predict the dist...

Intrinsic and extrinsic drivers shape the space use of wide-ranging raptors. A large proportion of raptors are migrants that shift their activity ranges between summer and winter habitats, where they encounter different environmental conditions. Analysing the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic drivers on the space use in summer and winter habitats...

Subterranean rodents can act as ecosystem engineers by shaping the landscape due to soil perturbation and herbivory. At the same time, their burrow density is affected by environmental conditions, vegetation and anthropogenic factors. Disentangling this complex interplay between subterranean rodents and their environment remains challenging. In our...

Invasive non‐native species can alter animal‐mediated seed dispersal interactions and ultimately affect the stability of recipient communities. The degree of such disturbances, however, is highly variable and depends on several factors, two of which have received little attention: the relative timing of native and non‐native fruiting phenologies, a...

Worldwide, wind turbines are increasingly being built at forest sites to meet the goals of national climate strategies. Yet, the impact on biodiversity is barely understood. Bats may be heavily affected by wind turbines in forests, because many species depend on forest ecosystems for roosting and hunting and can experience high fatality rates at wi...

Forest degradation changes the structural heterogeneity of forests and species communities, with potential consequences for ecosystem functions including seed dispersal by frugivorous animals. While the quantity of seed dispersal may be robust towards forest degradation, changes in the effectiveness of seed dispersal through qualitative changes are...

The framework of the plant economics spectrum advanced our understanding of plant ecology and proved as a unifying concept across plant taxonomy, growth forms and biomes. Similar approaches for animals mostly focus on linking life‐history and metabolic theories, but not on their application in ecosystem research. To fill this gap, we propose the an...

Protected areas are intended as tools in reducing threats to wildlife and preserving habitat for their long-term population persistence. Studies on ranging behavior provide insight into the utility of protected areas. Vultures are one of the fastest declining groups of birds globally and are popular subjects for telemetry studies, but continent-wid...

The most basic behavioural states of animals can be described as active or passive. However, while high-resolution observations of activity patterns can provide insights into the ecology of animal species, few methods are able to measure the activity of individuals of small taxa in their natural environment. We present a novel approach in which the...

Bioturbators shape their environment with considerable consequences for ecosystem processes. However, both the composition and the impact of bioturbator communities may change along climatic gradients. For burrowing animals, their abundance and composition depend on climatic and other abiotic components, with ants and mammals dominating in arid and...

Burrowing animals influence surface microtopography and hillslope sediment redistribution, but changes often remain undetected due to a lack of autonomous high resolution field monitoring techniques. In this study we present a new approach to quantify microtopographic variations and surface changes caused by burrowing animals and rainfall-driven er...

Biodiversity and ecosystem functions are highly threatened by global change. It has been proposed that geodiversity can be used as an easy-to-measure surrogate of biodiversity to guide conservation management. However, so far, there is mixed evidence to what extent geodiversity can predict biodiversity and ecosystem functions at the regional scale...

Habitat disturbance can have negative impacts on biodiversity, such as reducing species richness. The effects of habitat disturbances on parasite infections of host species, potentially altering their survival rate and thus abundance, are less well known. We examined the influence of forest logging in combination with seasonality, host abundance, h...

Activity ranges and habitat use of adult Red Kites Milvus milvus in Hesse in relation to territory occupancy, breeding and chick-rearing phases The quality of breeding habitat is one of the main determining factors for the distribution, reproduction and survival of wildlife. Due to their extensive activity ranges, highly mobile species, such as bi...

This study presents a conceptual framework of buffering through storage and recycling of elements in terrestrial ecosystems and reviews the current knowledge about storage and recycling of elements in plants and ecosystems. Terrestrial ecosystems, defined here as plant-soil systems, buffer inputs from the atmosphere and bedrock through storage and...

Background and aims – Agricultural intensification and loss of farmland heterogeneity have contributed to population declines of wild bees and other pollinators, which may have caused subsequent declines in insect-pollinated wild plants. Material and methods – Using data from 37 studies on 22 pollinator-dependent wild plant species across Europe, w...

National and local governments need to step up efforts to effectively implement the post‐2020 global biodiversity framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity to halt and reverse worsening biodiversity trends. Drawing on recent advances in interdisciplinary biodiversity science, we propose a framework for improved implementation by national...

Endozoochory is an important ecosystem function that, in temperate and boreal regions, is carried out mainly by birds and mammals. Due to their different quantitative and qualitative contributions to seed dispersal, these animals usually differ in their effectiveness as seed dispersers. However, there is still little information about how spatio‐te...

Der Klimawandel verändert unsere Wälder auf vielfältige Weise. Dabei werden negative Auswirkungen auf die Wälder, ihre Ökosystemleistungen und die Waldwirtschaft höchstwahrscheinlich überwiegen. Neben dem Anstieg der Temperatur und Änderung der Niederschlagsverteilung sind es vor allem die Zunahme von Extremereignissen und ihren Interaktionen, die...

Wildflower plantings are an important mitigation tool within agri-environmental schemes to counter insect decline in resource-scarce agricultural landscapes. Effectiveness of wildflower plantings for insect conservation is typically studied at the community or species level. It is the individual, however, that is subject to changing abiotic and bio...

The amount of carbon stored in deadwood is equivalent to about 8 per cent of the global forest carbon stocks1. The decomposition of deadwood is largely governed by climate2–5 with decomposer groups—such as microorganisms and insects—contributing to variations in the decomposition rates2,6,7. At the global scale, the contribution of insects to the d...

Burrowing animals are important ecosystem engineers affecting soil properties, the redis-tribution of nutrients and soil carbon sequestration through their burrowing activity. The magnitude of these effects depends on the spatial density and depth of the burrows, but a method to derive this type of spatial explicit data of is still missing. Here, w...

The inability of small-gaped animals to consume very large fruits may limit seed dispersal of the respective plants. This has often been shown for large-fruited plant species that remain poorly dispersed when large-gaped animal species are lost due to anthropogenic pressure. Little is known about whether gape-size limitations similarly influence se...

The endangered giant root-rat (Tachyoryctes macrocephalus, also known as giant mole rat) is a fossorial rodent endemic to the afro-alpine grasslands of the Bale Mountains in Ethiopia. The species is an important ecosystem engineer with the majority of the global population found within 1000 km². Here, we present the first complete mitochondrial gen...

Climate change is forcing the redistribution of life on Earth at an unprecedented velocity1,2. Migratory birds are thought to help plants to track climate change through long-distance seed dispersal3,4. However, seeds may be consistently dispersed towards cooler or warmer latitudes depending on whether the fruiting period of a plant species coincid...

Few plant functional types (PFTs) with fixed average traits are used in land surface models (LSMs) to consider feedback between vegetation and the changing atmosphere. It is uncertain if highly diverse vegetation requires more local PFTs. Here, we analyzed how 52 tree species of a megadiverse mountain rain forest separate into local tree functional...

Mutualistic interactions form the basis for many ecological processes and are often analyzed within the framework of ecological networks. These interactions can be sampled with a range of methods and first analyses of pollination networks sampled with different methods showed differences in common network metrics. However, it is yet unknown if metr...

Bioturbation is assumed to be coupled with vegetation, soil properties and topography. The soil properties influence the amount of nutrients needed for plant growth and determine the resistance of the soil to the burrowing itself and to the burrow stability. Vegetation provides food and shelter for the animals. At the same time, the burrowing destr...

The importance of keystone species is often defined based on a single type of interaction (e.g., keystone predator). However, it remains unclear whether this functional importance extends across interaction types. We conducted a global meta-analysis of interaction networks to examine whether species functional importance in one niche dimension is m...

Tropical mountain ecosystems are threatened by climate and land-use changes. Their diversity and complexity make projections how they respond to environmental changes challenging. A suitable way are trait-based approaches, by distinguishing between response traits that determine the resistance of species to environmental changes and effect traits t...

Megafaunal frugivores can consume large amounts of fruits whose seeds may be dispersed over long distances, thus, affecting plant regeneration processes and ecosystem functioning. We investigated the role of brown bears (Ursus arctos) as legitimate megafaunal seed dispersers. We assessed the quantity component of seed dispersal by brown bears acros...

Ungulate herbivores modify plant community compositions, which can modulate biodiversity at higher trophic levels. However, these cascading effects on herbivorous and predatory arthropods in forest ecosystems remain poorly understood. We compared plant and arthropod communities between fenced exclosures and unfenced control plots in a permanent for...

Timing of activity can reveal an organism's efforts to optimize foraging either by minimizing energy loss through passive movement or by maximizing energetic gain through foraging. Here, we assess whether signals of either of these strategies are detectable in the timing of activity of daily, local movements by birds. We compare the similarities of...

Timing of activity can reveal an organism's efforts to optimize foraging either by minimizing energy loss through passive movement or by maximizing energetic gain through foraging. Here, we assess whether signals of either of these strategies are detectable in the timing of activity of daily, local movements by birds. We compare the similarities of...