Thierry J Heger

• PhD
• Professor at HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland

Biodynamik-Präparate im Test STUDIE ZU WIRKSAMKEIT VON HORNMIST UND HORNKIESEL Der Wunsch nach mehr Nachhaltigkeit und einer geringeren Abhängigkeit von synthetischem Dünger und Pestiziden führt zu einem steigenden Interesse an ökologischer und biodynamischer Produktion. Eine Schweizer Studie ging der Frage nach, ob die Verwendung biodynamischer Pr...

The increasing interest in organic and biodynamic wine production is driven by a desire for sustainability and reduced reliance on synthetic inputs. As of 2021, organic viticulture accounted for 6.4 % of the global vineyard surface, with biodynamic practices gaining traction, particularly among high-end wineries seeking to differentiate their produ...

Ce deuxième article est complémentaire à celui du mois dernier qui présentait la partie on-station du projet CV-VigneSol. Il porte sur la partie on-farm de ce projet de recherche soutenu par l'OFAG de-puis 2021. Treize parcelles ont été mises en place dans le cadre de ce réseau a n d'acquérir des réfé-rences sur di érentes thématiques importantes c...

The impact of pesticide residues on non-target microorganisms in multi-contaminated soils remains a subject of limited understanding. Here we investigated the dissipation of commonly used pesticides in a multi-contaminated vineyard soil and its influence on bacterial, fungal, and protistan communities. We conducted laboratory soil microcosm experim...

Aim The diversity and distribution of soil microorganisms and their potential for long‐distance dispersal (LDD) are poorly documented, making the threats posed by climate change difficult to assess. If microorganisms do not disperse globally, regional endemism may develop and extinction may occur due to environmental changes. Here, we addressed thi...

In the pursuit of increasing sustainability, climate change resiliency and independence of synthetic pesticides in agriculture, the interest of consumers and producers in organic and biodynamic farming has been steadily increasing in recent decennia. This is, in particular, the case for the vitivinicultural industry in Europe, where more and more p...

Herbicide-free soil management practices are needed to mitigate climate change, increase biodiversity and improve soil quality while minimizing detrimental effects on grapevine's stress tolerance and fruit quality. Within a multidisciplinary 4-year project we aim to a) evaluate the impact of cover crops on environmental and agronomic parameters and...

Management of agricultural soil quality requires fast and cost-efficient methods to identify multiple stressors that can affect soil organisms and associated ecological processes. Here, we propose to use soil protists which have a great yet poorly explored potential for bioindication. They are ubiquitous, highly diverse, and respond to various stre...

Soil photoautotrophic prokaryotes and micro‐eukaryotes – known as soil algae – are, together with heterotrophic microorganisms, a constitutive part of the microbiome in surface soils. Similar to plants, they fix atmospheric carbon (C) through photosynthesis for their own growth, yet their contribution to global and regional biogeochemical C cycling...

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Alternative to herbicides in viticulture and arboriculture: choice of species for cover crops and management strategies. Areas where mechanization is difficult (under the row, on steep slopes and in inaccessible plots) represent a technical challenge for alternatives to herbicide use. To circumvent these difficulties, cover crops might represent...

Environmental sequencing surveys of soils and freshwaters revealed high abundance and diversity of the Rhogostomidae, a group of omnivorous thecate amoebae. This is puzzling since only a few Rhogostomidae species have yet been described and only a handful of reports mention them in field surveys. We investigated the putative cryptic diversity of th...

The use of synthetic pesticides in agriculture is increasingly debated. However, few studies have compared the impact of synthetic pesticides and alternative biopesticides on non-target soil microorganisms playing a central role in soil functioning. We conducted a mesocosm experiment and used high-throughput amplicon sequencing to test the impact o...

Apicomplexans are a group of microbial eukaryotes that contain some of the most well-studied parasites, including the causing agents of toxoplasmosis and malaria, and emergent diseases like cryptosporidiosis or babesiosis. Decades of research have illuminated the pathogenic mechanisms, molecular biology, and genomics of model apicomplexans, but we...

Apicomplexans are a group of microbial eukaryotes that contain some of the most well-studied parasites, including widespread intracellular pathogens of mammals such as Toxoplasma and Plasmodium (the agent of malaria), and emergent pathogens like Cryptosporidium and Babesia. Decades of research have illuminated the pathogenic mechanisms, molecular b...

The Pacific coastal temperate rainforest (PCTR) is a global hot-spot for carbon cycling and export. Yet the influence of microorganisms on carbon cycling processes in PCTR soil is poorly characterized. We developed and tested a conceptual model of seasonal microbial carbon cycling in PCTR soil through integration of geochemistry, micro-meteorology,...

Although previous studies, mostly based on microscopy analyses of a few groups of protists, have suggested that protists are abundant and diverse in litter and moss habitats, the overall diversity of moss and litter associated protists remains elusive. Here, high-throughput environmental sequencing was used to characterize the diversity and communi...

Photosynthetic picoeukaryotes contribute a significant fraction of primary production in the upper ocean. Micromonas pusilla is an ecologically relevant photosynthetic picoeukaryote, abundantly and widely distributed in marine waters. Grazing by protists may control the abundance of picoeukaryotes such as M. pusilla, but the diversity of the respon...

Most groups of higher organisms show a decrease in species richness toward high altitude, but the existence of such a pattern is debated for micro-eukaryotes. Existing data are scarce and mostly confounded with the diversity of habitats that also decreases with elevation. In order to disentangle these two factors, one approach is to consider only s...

Terrestrial organic matter exported from coastal watersheds influences marine ecosystems and carbon budgets across the globe, yet much is unknown about the fundamental processes of land-sea carbon cycling or system response to climate change. On two outer-coast islands near the center of the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest (PCTR), the Hakai In...

Arcellinid testate amoebae (Amoebozoa) form a group of free-living microbial eukaryotes with one of the oldest fossil records known, yet several aspects of their evolutionary history remain poorly understood. Arcellinids occur in a range of terrestrial, freshwater and even brackish habitats; however, many arcellinid morphospecies such as Hyalosphen...

Endosymbiosis is a central and much studied process in the evolution of eukaryotes. While plastid evolution in eukaryotic algae has been extensively studied, much less is known about the evolution of mixotrophy in amoeboid protists, which has been found in three of the five super groups of Eukaryotes. We identified the green endosymbionts in four o...

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The discovery and characterization of protist communities from diverse environments are crucial for understanding the overall evolutionary history of life on earth. However, major questions about the diversity, ecology, and evolutionary history of protists remain unanswered, notably because data obtained from natural protist communities, especially...

Although free-living protists play essential roles in aquatic and soil ecology, little is known about their diversity and phylogeography, especially in terrestrial ecosystems. We used mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) gene sequences to investigate the genetic diversity and phylogeography of the testate amoeba morphospecies Hyalosph...

Species identification by means of morphology is often problematic in protists. Nebela tincta-collaris-bohemica (Arcellinida) is a species complex of small to medium-sized (ca.100μm) testate amoebae common in peat bogs and forest soils. The taxonomic validity of characters used to define species within this group is debated and causes confusion in...

Soils are home to a vast and still poorly known diversity of organisms that perform essential ecosystem functions. Soil communities also respond to and can reflect ecological gradients and perturbations, including direct and indirect human impact [1,2]. Soil quality indicators are physical, chemical, and biological properties, processes, and charac...

Testate amoebae (Arcellinida and Euglyphida) and diatoms (Bacillariophyta) respond to different ecological gradients. These protists are useful tools for biomonitoring and paleoecological studies in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about the responses of these microeukaryotes to soil management practices. We analyzed the...

The systematics of lobose testate amoebae (Arcellinida), a diverse group of shelled free-living unicel-lular eukaryotes, is still mostly based on morphological criteria such as shell shape and composition. Few molecular phylogenetic studies have been performed on these organisms to date, and their phy-logeny suffers from typical under-sampling arte...

We used Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit 1 (COI) to assess the phylogenetic relationships and taxonomy of Nebela sensu stricto and similar taxa (Nebela group, Arcellinida) in order to clarify the taxonomic validity of morphological characters. The COI data not only successfully separated all studied morphospecies but also revealed the existence of severa...

Aim The question whether free-living protists are generally cosmopolitan is currently a matter of debate. In this study we investigate the geographical distribution of a distinctive testate amoeba species, Nebela ansata, and use our data to assess the potential for highly restricted distribution patterns in some protist species. Location Global. Me...