Peter Van Bodegom

• prof.
• Professor (Full) at Leiden University

Plant trait expressions and their trade-offs reflect the responses and long-term ecological adaptation to environmental gradients. However, how such expressions and trade-offs help plants to acclimate to a new environment remains poorly understood, which is a fundamental preset for plants' survival under a global change scenario. By comparing the t...

Globally, there is a growing societal need for multifunctional coastal climate adaptation of sandy shores in the coming decades. Sand nourishment strategies are increasingly regarded as promising nature-based approaches, as they may increase flood safety and mitigate erosion while enhancing recreational and ecological functioning. However, their mu...

While there is an emerging body of research showing the consequences of land use intensity on soil biodiversity, most studies focus on biodiversity responses to a single or a limited number of agricultural practices in controlled settings or at a single field site, neglecting that multiple practices are simultaneously applied by farmers in real agr...

In response to multiple societal challenges faced in cities, nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining prominence as means to support sustainable and resilient urban planning. However, NbS are being implemented in cities around the globe without comprehensive evidence on their effectiveness in addressing urban challenges. Based on a systematic mappi...

Aim Global biodiversity loss resulting from anthropogenic land‐use activities is a pressing concern, requiring precise assessments of impacts at large spatial extents. Existing models mainly focus on species richness and abundance, lacking insights into ecological mechanisms and species' roles in ecosystem functioning. To bridge this gap, we conduc...

To enable detailed study of a wide variety of future health challenges, we have created future land use maps for the Netherlands for 2050, based on the Dutch One Health Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). This was done using the DynaCLUE modelling framework. Future land use is based on altitude, soil properties, groundwater, salinity, flood risk...

The multifunctional character of nature-based solutions (NbS) in cities, benefiting both biodiversity and human well-being, is gaining increasing attention. Designing multifunctional NbS requires insights in how NbS contribute to urban biodiversity, since biodiversity supports ecosystem stability, resilience and connected benefits for people. Howev...

Aedes vexans (Meigen, 1830) is a floodwater mosquito species that may cause significant nuisance and can serve as a vector for multiple arboviruses. Its distribution is expected to shift in the future as a result of changes in climate and land use. Understanding these shifts is important for estimating future disease risk. This study aims to identi...

Increased climate impacts threaten coastal functions globally, highlighting the need for multifunctional coastal climate adaptation. Sand nourishment can adapt sandy coasts to sea level rise, mitigate erosion, increase flood safety, enhance ecological habitats and expand recreational space. Therefore, sand nourishment is increasingly regarded as a...

Land use intensification can influence soil microbial communities and their functional potential. However, the impacts of different aspects of land use intensification on functional groups of soil microbes remain insufficiently elucidated in agroecosystems. This study investigated soil microbial groups and their functional potential in arable field...

Background: The world is experiencing rapid anthropogenic-driven changes in climate, biodiversity, and pollution. While most insect species are declining due to these changes, disease-transmitting mosquitoes, might thrive. However, the quantitative impacts of these changes on mosquito populations are not well understood. Our study aims to evaluate...

Wild birds serve as reservoirs and vectors for many different pathogens and changes in their distribution and abundance due to environmental change will influence disease risk. We study three species which are highly abundant in north-western Europe and which can transmit a wide range of diseases including avian influenza and West Nile virus: black...

The density of wood is a key indicator of the carbon investment strategies of trees, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here we analyse information from 1.1 mil...

Temperature is commonly acknowledged as one of the primary forces driving ectotherm vector populations, most notably by influencing metabolic rates and survival. Although numerous experiments have shown this for a wide variety of organisms, the vast majority has been conducted at constant temperatures and changes therein, while temperature is far f...

Rapid urbanisation puts pressure on biodiversity by habitat fragmentation and habitat quality among others. These habitat changes are known to affect species dispersal and connectivity and ultimately species distribution in many ecosystems. However, little is known about the changing urban species distributions which in turn influence community ass...

Although greenspace exposure has physiological health benefits, there is insufficient research on the threshold effect of health benefits in typical urban landscapes. Here we selected five typical urban landscapes (open greenspace, semi-closed greenspace, closed greenspace, bluespace, grey space) in 15 urban parks in Xiamen, China, and applied the...

Lianas profoundly affect tropical forests dynamics, reducing productivity and carbon storage, which underscores the importance of monitoring change in their abundance in projecting the future of the global terrestrial carbon store. While increasing liana populations are documented within the Neotropics, the global consistency of these patterns is q...

Foliar traits such as specific leaf area (SLA), leaf nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) concentrations play important roles in plant economic strategies and ecosystem functioning. Various global maps of these foliar traits have been generated using statistical upscaling approaches based on in-situ trait observations. Here, we intercompare such global...

1. Temperature is commonly acknowledged as one of the primary forces driving ectotherm vector populations, most notably by influencing metabolic rates and survival. Although numerous experiments have shown this for a wide variety of organisms, the vast majority has been conducted at constant temperatures and changes therein, while temperature is fa...

Background Salinity, exacerbated by rising sea levels, is a critical environmental cue affecting freshwater ecosystems. Predicting ecosystem structure in response to such changes and their implications for the geographical distribution of arthropod disease vectors requires further insights into the plasticity and adaptability of lower trophic level...

Soil microbial communities play pivotal roles in maintaining soil health in agroecosystems. However, how the delivery of multiple microbial functions in agroecosystems is maintained remains poorly understood. This may put us at risk of incurring unexpected trade-offs between soil functions. We elucidate how interactions between soil microbes can le...

An increasing number of studies of above‐belowground interactions provide a fundamental basis for our understanding of the coexistence between plant and soil communities. However, we lack empirical evidence to understand the directionality of drivers of plant and soil communities under natural conditions: ‘Are soil microorganisms driving plant comm...

Background Mosquito-borne diseases are on the rise. While climatic factors have been linked to disease occurrences, they do not explain the non-random spatial distribution in disease outbreaks. Landscape-related factors, such as vegetation structure, likely play a crucial but hitherto unquantified role. Methods We explored how three critically imp...

The global biodiversity loss resulting from anthropogenic land-use activities is a pressing concern, requiring precise assessments of impacts at large spatial extents. Existing models primarily focus on quantifying impacts on species richness and abundance, often overlooking the ecological relevance of species traits and their contributions to ecos...

The density of wood is a key indicator of trees’ carbon investment strategies, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here, we analyze information from 1.1 million...

Background There is an urgent need for cities to become more climate resilient; one of the key strategies is to include more green spaces in the urban environment. Currently, there is a worry that increasing green spaces might increase mosquito nuisance. As such, this study explores a comprehensive understanding of how mosquitoes utilise contrastin...

The world is changing, in terms of both climate and socio-economics. These changes have the potential to have a profound impact on the health of humans, animals and the environment, often grouped together as ‘One Health’. Humans, animals and the environment are closely interlinked and to determine realistic future vulnerabilities we must consider e...

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are fast becoming the norm for multifunctional coastal climate adaptation to increased sea-level rise. However, informing decision-makers about NbS presents ongoing challenges. This study set out to identify and explore the information requirements at different stages of the decision-making process of coastal NbS. Devel...

Although greenspace exposure has physiological health benefits, there is insufficient research on the threshold effect of health benefits in typical urban landscapes. Here we selected five typical urban landscapes (open greenspace, semi-closed greenspace, closed greenspace, bluespace, grey space) in 15 urban parks in Xiamen, China, and applied the...

In response to multiple societal challenges faced by urban areas, nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining prominence as means to support sustainable and resilient urban planning. However, NbS are being implemented in cities around the globe without comprehensive evidence on their effectiveness in addressing urban challenges. Based on a systematic...

he 21st century presents significant challenges to humanity, encompassing rapid urbanization, population expansion, as well as socio-economic, physical, and environmental stressors. In order to establish an ideal equilibrium between economic advancement and environmental preservation within contemporary and prospective urban areas, the Smart Sustai...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) has been widely used in biomonitoring and has major advantages compared to traditional methods such as counting observations. However, the persistence of eDNA within an ecosystem can lead to false-positive results on the presence of organisms. To improve the accuracy of the interpretation of eDNA results, the present study...

Knowledge of food web interactions is essential for understanding the role of carnivores in an ecosystem and designing appropriate conservation and management strategies to preserve them. These interactions can only be understood by studying carnivores' diets and obtaining comprehensive and unbiased diet data. For large carnivores—which typically r...

Fundamental axes of variation in plant traits result from trade-offs between costs and benefits of resource-use strategies at the leaf scale. However, it is unclear whether similar trade-offs propagate to the ecosystem level. Here, we test whether trait correlation patterns predicted by three well-known leaf- and plant-level coordination theories –...

The incidence and risk of mosquito-borne disease outbreaks in Northwestern Europe has increased over the last few decades. Understanding the underlying environmental drivers of mosquito population dynamics helps to adequately assess mosquito-borne disease risk. While previous studies have focussed primarily on the effects of climatic conditions (i....

Organic amendments (OAs) can improve the hydro‐physical properties of a soil and thereby potentially enhance the resilience of agricultural systems to droughts and floods. An OA's contribution to this resilience, however, depends on the timeliness of its impacts, as soil improvements should be achieved when droughts are most frequent or flood risks...

The increasing application of synthetic fertilizer has tripled nitrogen (N) inputs over the 20th century. N enrichment decreases water quality and threatens aquatic species such as fish through eutrophication and toxicity. However, the impacts of N on freshwater ecosystems are typically neglected in life cycle assessment (LCA). Due to the variety o...

To prevent the non-acceptable effects of agrochemicals on arable fields, Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) aims to assess and protect against a wide range of risks due to stressors to non-target species. While exposure to stress is a key factor in ERA models, exposure values are difficult to obtain and rely on laboratory studies with often debata...

Climate change impacts on freshwater ecosystems and freshwater biodiversity show strong spatial variability, highlighting the importance of a global perspective. While previous studies on biodiversity mostly focussed on species richness, functional diversity, which is a better predictor of ecosystem functioning, has received much less attention. Th...

Foliar traits such as specific leaf area (SLA), leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations play an important role in plant economic strategies and ecosystem functioning. Various global maps of these foliar traits have been generated using statistical upscaling approaches based on in-situ trait observations.Here, we intercompare such global...

As Earth's climate has varied strongly through geological time, studying the impacts of past climate change on biodiversity helps to understand the risks from future climate change. However, it remains unclear how paleoclimate shapes spatial variation in biodiversity. Here, we assessed the influence of Quaternary climate change on spatial dissimila...

The 21st-century provides major challenges to mankind including rapid urbanization, population growth, and socio-economic, physical and environmental pressures. To find an optimal balance between economic growth and environmental protection in modern cities, smart sustainability approach are essential. Here, we aim at introducing the future smart s...

While wild pollinators play a key role in global food production, their assessment is currently missing from the most commonly used environmental impact assessment method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is mainly due to constraints in data availability and compatibility with LCA inventories. To target this gap, relative pollinator abundance esti...

Tropical forests support immense biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services for billions of people. Despite this value, tropical deforestation continues at a high rate. Emerging evidence suggests that elections can play an important role in shaping deforestation, for instance by incentivising politicians to allow increased utilisation of...

Background Diatoms are present in all waters and are highly sensitive to pollution gradients. Therefore, they are ideal bioindicators for water quality assessment. Current indices used in these applications are based on identifying diatom species and counting their abundances using traditional light microscopy. Several molecular techniques have bee...

The extramatrical mycelium of ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) is an important source of soil carbon and nitrogen. While the importance of recalcitrant compounds in the fungal cell wall has been explored earlier, the contribution of highly abundant but labile components, like glucans, and the role of their temporal dynamics during decomposition remains...

Plant functional traits are increasingly recognised as being impacted by soil abiotic and biotic factors. Yet, the question to what extent the coupling between community‐level above‐ and below‐ground traits is affected by soil conditions remains open. In a field experiment in dune grassland, we quantified the responses of both community‐level leaf...

Despite the recognized importance of mycorrhizal associations in ecosystem functioning, the actual abundance patterns of mycorrhizal fungi belowground are still unknown. This information is key for better quantification of mycorrhizal impacts on ecosystem processes and for incorporating mycorrhizal pathways into global biogeochemical models. Here w...

Ecology is usually very good in making descriptive explanations of what is observed, but is often unable to make predictions of the response of ecosystems to change. This has implications in a human-dominated world where a suite of anthropogenic stresses are threatening the resilience and functioning of ecosystems that sustain mankind through a ran...

Pastures have become one of the most important sources of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) pollution, bringing risks to human health through the environment and the food that is grown there. Another significant source of food production is greenhouse horticulture, which is typically located near pastures. Through waterways, pasture-originated ARG...

The importance of intraspecific trait variation (ITV) in community dynamics is increasingly being recognised, but the drivers of ITV have not yet been well-studied. Here, we analysed whether environmental conditions, biotic interactions and species features are related to ITV on a global scale. We compiled a global species’ ITV database including 2...

Plants can respond to changing climatic conditions through genetic adaptation of their functional traits. Despite the relevance of adaptation to climate change, much remains unknown about plant genetic adaptation rates, including whether these rates differ among plant characteristics and trait types. We performed a meta-analysis to investigate patt...

Fundamental axes of variation in plant traits result from trade-offs between costs and benefits of resource-use strategies at the leaf scale. However, it is unclear whether trade-offs and optimality principles in functional traits of leaves are conserved at the ecosystem level. We tested three well-known leaf- and plant-level coordination theories...

Remote sensing (RS) is now a standard tool used for grassland monitoring thanks to the availability of data at an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. The approaches to monitor grasslands often rely on the use of vegetation indices (e.g. NDVI) and empirical models trained on field data collected in tandem with the RS data. The best combin...

Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form...

Understanding how and why soil microbial communities respond to temperature changes is important for understanding the drivers of microbial distribution and abundance. Studying soil microbe responses to warming is often made difficult by concurrent warming effects on soil and vegetation and by a limited number of warming levels preventing the detec...

Anthropogenic stressors on the environment are increasing at unprecedented rates and include urbanization, nutrient pollution, water management, altered land use and climate change. Their effects on disease vectors are poorly understood. A series of full factorial experiments investigated how key human induced abiotic pressures, and interactions be...

Global sustainable agricultural systems are under threat, due to increasing and co-occurring drought and salinity stresses. Combined effects of these stresses on agricultural crops have traditionally been evaluated in small-scale experimental studies. Consequently, large-scale studies need to be performed to increase our understanding and assessmen...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration through the application of organic amendments (OAs) is considered an important strategy to offset anthropogenic Cv93..0O2 emissions while simultaneously enhancing soil quality and food security. The efficiency of SOC sequestration, however, depends on the priming effect which is influenced by interactions of...

Global patterns of regional (gamma) plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether these patterns hold for local communities, and the dependence on spatial grain, remain controversial. Using data on 170,272 georeferenced local plant assemblages, we created global maps of alpha diversity (local species richness) for vascular plants at three...

Climate change predictions indicate that summer droughts will become more severe and frequent. Yet, the impact of soil communities on the response of plant communities to drought remains unclear. Here, we report the results of a novel field experiment, in which we manipulated soil communities by adding soil inocula originating from different succes...

Background: Diatoms are present in all waters and are highly sensitive to pollution gradients. Therefore, they are ideal bioindicators for water quality assessment. Current indices used in these applications are based on identifying diatom species and counting their abundances using traditional light microscopy. Several molecular techniques have be...

Global warming may lead to carbon transfers from soils to the atmosphere, yet this positive feedback to the climate system remains highly uncertain, especially in subsoils . Using natural geothermal soil warming gradients of up to +6.4 ∘C in subarctic grasslands , we show that soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks decline strongly and linearly with warm...

In contrast to surveys based on a few genes that often provide limited taxonomic resolution, transcriptomes provide a wealth of genomic loci that can resolve relationships among taxonomically challenging lineages. Diatoms are a diverse group of aquatic microalgae that includes important bioindicator species and many such lineages. One example is Ni...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) approaches contributing to species identifications are quickly becoming the new norm in biomonitoring and ecosystem assessments. Yet, information such as age and health state of the population, which is vital to species biomonitoring, has not been accessible from eDNA. DNA methylation has the potential to provide such infor...

Safeguarding Earth’s tree diversity is a conservation priority due to the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services such as carbon sequestration. Here, we improve the foundation for effective conservation of global tree diversity by analyzing a recently developed database of tree species covering 46,752 species. We q...