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Für alle Antragstellenden im SPP 1374

Schwerpunktprogramm SPP 1374/5 - Biodiversity Exploratories

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Für bisherige Antragstellende im SPP 1374

Neuantrag oder Fortsetzungsantrag?

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List of all 95 submitted statements of interest

Core Projects

Core project 1:

Title: Biodiversity Exploratory Office (BEO)

Applicants: Markus Fischer (Frankfurt)

The Biodiversity Exploratories Office (BEO) is the central unit for project administration, scientific coordination, and communication. It will continue to support the steering committee, the Local Management Teams (core project 2), and the BExIS team (core project 4). It will also support all research groups and synchronize research activities across the whole program. The BEO organizes the annual general assembly as well as specific workshops to facilitate collaboration among groups. The BEO is the main contact point for the DFG, stakeholders, the scientific community, the press, and the public. Communication and outreach will be accomplished via the program website www.biodiversity-exploratories.de, information brochures, science meetings, exhibitions, and publications. Activities to support female scientists will also be promoted.

Core project 2:

Title: Local Management Teams

Applicants: Wolfgang W. Weisser (Freising), Manfred Ayasse (Ulm), Markus Fischer (Frankfurt)

The Local Management Teams (LMTs) provide the basis for the experimental work of all projects in the three Biodiversity Exploratories. The LMTs maintain the infrastructure of the plots, research stations and vehicles, support the research of the individual projects, act as liaison body to land users, local and regional administration and other stakeholders and they gather data on 1) local land use, 2) climate, and 3) animal occurrence using batcorders and camera traps, which are baseline data for all scientists of the Biodiversity Exploratories. The LMTs, together with the BEO, form the administrative and operational backbone of the Exploratories.

Core project 3:

Title: Instrumentation and Remote Sensing

Applicants: Thomas Nauss (Marburg), Christoph Kleinn (Göttingen)

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We will continue the maintenance of the climate network and the provision of remote sensing products. We extend the observations by (i) potential evaporation and evapo-transpiration and (ii) by aerial observations from UAV platforms. Furthermore, we will develop unified sets of remote sensing metrics to characterize structure, land use intensity and temporal traits. In addition to data access routines and database functionality, these metrics will be included in a new R package/DB similar to the recently developed time series database component in BExIS.

Core Project 4:

Title: Data Management

Applicants: Birgitta König-Ries (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena)

The Data Management Project of the Biodiversity Exploratories (BE) Research provides the platform for data storage and information exchange between the different working groups. In this regard, we plan to continue supporting BE researchers in their data management activities which includes data collection planning, description, storage and archiving, discovery, integration, analysis, visualization, publishing and sharing. Such support includes infrastructure management, tool development, help desk, etc.

Core Project 5:

Title: Botany

Applicants: Markus Fischer, Daniel Prati (University of Bern)

The Botany core project will continue the annual monitoring of vascular plants and bryophytes on all experimental plots in grassland and forest and use nested subplots to assess species-area curves. Further, we will monitor productivity, strategy type composition and functional composition of all plant communities, and the demographic structure of selected species. Moreover, the subplots of the seed addition and disturbance experiment (SADE) will be monitored in grasslands and the herbivore exclusion plots in forests, which will yield information on the resistance and resilience of plant communities.

Core Project 6:

Title: Forest Structure

Applicants: Christian Ammer (Göttingen)

Based on the forest inventory of the current phase (re-inventory of 128 EPs and 1st inventory of 22 EPs) we will dynamise forest management intensity (ΔSMI and FORMI) and forest stand structure (ΔSSA). A re-inventory of dead-wood on all EPs is planned in cooperation with AG Bauhus. The results of the project will allow to take changes in land use

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intensity between years into account as current practice on the grassland plots. The impact of browsing on regeneration growth and tree species diversity will be re-examined (cooperation with vertebrate-proposal AG Müller)

Core project 7:

Title: Arthropods

Applicants: Wolfgang W. Weisser (Freising), Nico Blüthgen (TU Darmstadt)

Monitoring of arthropods in forests and grasslands in all EPs and in the BELongDead logs will be continued to facilitate the analysis of fluctuations and long-term trends in arthropod communities and their responses to land-use intensity dynamics. We will examine the drivers of inter-annual asynchrony between animal species, i.e. compensatory dynamics that stabilize the density of each functional group, and of variation in population stability.

Core Project 8:

Title: Soil fungal diversity along land use gradients

Applicants: François Buscot, Tesfaye Wubet (UFZ Halle/Saale)

Core 9 will continue to monitor soil fungi diversity by next generation sequencing in all the grassland and forest experimental plots, co-coordinate joint soil sampling and centralized soil DNA/RNA extraction for other contributing soil microorganism projects. After 2011, 2014 a third sampling in 2017 will enable to us to analyze the temporal and spatial dynamics of soil fungal and co-occurring soil microbes. We will continue working on the grassland phytometer experiment (BELOW) coordinated by H. Bruelheide (Halle/Saale) and the Beech transplant experiment in the forest ecosystem (ECTOMYC) lead by A. Polle (Göttingen).

Core project 9:

Title: Linking soil functions with land use and biodiversity

Applicants: Marion Schrumpf, Susan Trumbore (Jena)

The core project soil ensures the availability of essential soil data and functions on all EPs, and assists with coordinated soil sampling and synthesis activities. We focus on studying how land use and biodiversity affect soil organic matter input, stability and turnover, as well as links between carbon and nutrient cycles at the interface between plants, soil and microorganisms. We plan more in-depth studies on effects of fertilizer types and links between soil processes and microbial drivers using 13C, 15N and SIP.

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Core Project 10:

Title: Synthesis

Applicants: Markus Fischer, Eric Allan (University of Bern)

The core synthesis project has two main goals: 1) comprehensive, innovative syntheses addressing central questions of the Biodiversity Exploratories. This includes, a) examining land-use effects (in forest and grassland) on biodiversity to determine: how community assembly is affected (both comparing assembly mechanisms across many organism groups and analyzing assembly of multitrophic communities) and what species characteristics predict response to land-use intensity across trophic levels. b) Exploring the functional effects of land use, changes in diversity and multitrophic composition on trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem functions and on their resilience. 2) Catalysing synthesis efforts of others by spreading concepts and statistical methods to create synergies and added value across the Biodiversity Exploratories.

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Further Projects (in alphabetical order of name of first PI) 11 Title: Underlying mechanisms of drought and grazing effects on grassland communities: improving the functional traits framework Applicants: Dr. Leonor Alvarez-Cansino, Dr. Eunyoung Jung (University of Bayreuth) Interacting drought and grazing effects differ between grassland species, with consequences for community composition and ecosystem function. The underlying mechanisms, such as traits conferring differential drought and grazing resistance, are not fully explored. We propose a thorough functional trait approach to explicitly link species and community responses to grazing and drought, and explore management implications.

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Title: Knowledge Transfer Project

Applicants: Christian Ammer, Peter Schall (Göttingen)

The transfer of scientific findings into forest management practice is often challenging as objectives of research and management differ. In close cooperation with local stakeholders, our project will transfer scientific results to spatial and temporal scales relevant for forest managers, identify regional-based management strategies for biodiversity and other goods and services, and assess and improve knowledge transfer from science to stakeholders and vice versa.

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Title: Economic insurance value of plant diversity for biomass production

Applicants: Stefan Baumgärtner, Alexandra-Maria Klein (University of Freiburg)

Biodiversity can provide insurance for biomass production. Most previous studies do not consider biomass users’ risk preferences, which are necessary for an economic valuation of insurance. We intend to evaluate the economic insurance value of plant diversity for risk-averse biomass users along environmental and land-use gradients and for different types and measures of risk preferences, employing existing biological, environmental and land-use data from the Biodiversity Exploratories.

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Title: Deciphering ecological filters and random effects on the dynamic of endophytic fungal communities

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Dominik Begerow (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

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Our study on epi- and endophytic fungal communities indicate a dynamic turnover during the vegetation period and seems to be influenced by land use, niche effects and inoculation probability. To disentangle both mechanisms, we will access the dynamic of fungal spore abundance in the air and of the leaves using meta’omics. The combination of these data will allow a functional understanding of the ecological filters, which determine the epi- and endophytic communities.

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Title: Dung beetle – microbe interactions affect ecosystem services

Applicants: Nico Blüthgen (TU Darmstadt), Thomas Schmitt (University of Würzburg), Ellen Kandeler (Hohenheim), Heike Feldhaar (University of Bayreuth)

Microorganisms influence the nutrient and volatile composition of livestock dung and thus decomposition rate by dung beetles that also engage their own gut bacteria. Effects vary with cattle treatment and forage quality. In turn, the beetles’ dung burial stimulates the fertility and microbial activity in forest and grassland soils. We quantify these functional relationships based on experiments with sterilized and labelled dung.

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Title: Influence of land use change on soil moisture regime

Applicants: Dr. Christina Bogner (University of Bayreuth)

Soil moisture is an essential climate variable. It is an important part of the soil-root continuum and is known to influence plant and microbial biodiversity. In the soil, water moves along the gradient of the soil water potential. Land use change or intensification could affect the soil moisture regime and soil water fluxes. We propose to analyse the influence of different land uses on the soil moisture regime and soil water fluxes and their possible coupling to biodiversity.

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Title: Impact of deadwood on functional diversity and biogeochemical traits in underlying forest soils

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Werner Borken (University of Bayreuth), Dr. habil. Derek Persoh (University of Bochum)

Carbon and nutrients may be translocated between deadwood and soil; e.g., via fungal mycelium. We hypothesize significant differences in this exchange according to tree species, site properties and management. We will analyze the soil beneath tree logs (see

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BELongDead project) regarding soil organic matter quality, fine root biomass, enzyme activity, composition and gene expression of fungal communities.

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Title: Long-term ecological and evolutionary trajectories in the Biodiversity Exploratories: A comparison of contemporary plants with their regional ancestors

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Oliver Bossdorf, Dr. Hernán Burbano (University of Tübingen)

Herbarium collections offer unique opportunities for studying long-term ecological and evolutionary changes in plants. For many of the common plant species occurring in the Biodiversity Exploratories, a large number of historical specimen from the same regions can be found in herbaria. We propose to use these collections to compare the (1) phenology and trait variation, as well as (2) the molecular genetic diversity and composition of contemporary plants to that of their regional ancestors.

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Title: Biodiversity and ecosystem processes from a remote sensing perspective

Applicants: Roland Brandl, Thomas Nauss (University of Marburg)

Land-use intensity alters plant and animal biodiversity and functionally related ecosystem processes. Multi-and hyperspectral remote sensing information adds an additional and synergistic perspective on this relationship and the related spectral and structural indicators can form the basis for a cost-effective monitoring system. This project is also closely linked to the one of Müller, Krzystek, and Levick by providing a hyperspectral explanatory perspective.

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Title: Effects of land use and land use intensity on the phylogenetic and interaction structure of species communities

Applicants: Dr. Martin Brändle (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

We will analyze how land-use change (forests versus grasslands) and land use intensity within these habitats affects the phylogenetic community and species interaction structure of different strata (canopy layer versus herb layer, herb layer versus ground layer). This goal will be achieved by extensive use of BExIS-data, compiling phylogenetic supertrees and by the utilization of a recently established interaction database of phytophagous insects and their host-plants.

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Title: Correspondence of plant and microbe communities, root exudates and root traits in grassland communities (BE LOW)

Applicants: Helge Bruelheide (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, iDiv Leipzig), Ute Jandt (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, iDiv Leipzig), Dierk Scheel (Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry Halle (Saale), iDiv Leipzig)2,3

In the current phase, the BE LOW project has studied each ten grass and herb species in the field and in the greenhouse for performance, root traits and root exudates. We found trait and exudate patterns to be strongly related, with species identity, plot identity and traits at the individual level explaining about 30% of exudate composition. In the next phase we plan (1) to continue our experiments, to (2) identify the molecular structure of the species-, plant community- and root trait-specific exudates, (3) to link these data to the microbial composition data in cooperation with our partner projects, and (4) to use the synthesized data to assess overall complementarity of the combined plant and microbial communities.

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Title: Understanding the consequences of land-use intensity for multitrophic biodiversity changes and whole-ecosystem functioning

Applicants: Dr. Oksana Buzhdygan (Freie Universität Berlin)

Using extensive Exploratories data, energy-flow based trophic networks covering living and nonliving above- and belowground ecosystem components will be modelled for each grassland experimental plot. Applying the Quantitative Network Analysis, the whole-ecosystem functions (i.e. energy storage, flow, cycling, use efficiency and turnover) will be measured to address consequences of land-use intensity for multitrophic biodiversity changes and for the functioning of ecosystem as a whole.

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Title: Killing the winner – The role of phages as driver for belowground biodiversity under different land use intensities

Applicants: Li Deng (Helmholtz Zentrum München), Christian Griebler (Helmholtz Zentrum München), Michael Schloter (Technische Universität München)

One gram of soil harbors up to 10 times more viruses and phages than bacteria. However up to now, the diversity of viruses and phages in soil are almost a black box and their role as driver for soil biota has been so far largely ignored. Furthermore it is unclear which factors drive the diversity of viruses and phages in soil.

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We postulate that besides seasonal changes, land intensity acts as a major driver for viruses and phages in soil. Whereas in soils with high land use intensity and a highly active microflora, the abundance of the “virome” is high, due to a fast replication in the respective hosts, in soils under low land use intensity, the abundance of virus and phages is reduced as a matter of a general lower microbial activity. Diversity of the “virome” in contrast is higher in soils under low land use conditions as more potentials hosts are present compared to soil under high land use intensity. Besides diversity and abundance analysis of the viruses and phages we will also analyze consequences for the hosts in terms of horizontal gene transfer as well as building up of an prokaryotic “memory system” based on CRSPR elements.

To prove our hypothesis, studies will focus along a land use intensity gradient in selected grassland plots along all three exploratories.

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Title: Ecological and evolutionary consequences of land-use: natural selection and intraspecific variability in grasshopper species

Applicants: Petra Dieker, Holger Schielzeth (Bielefeld University)

Land-use is one of the main drivers for biodiversity change. Whether species are able to cope with environmental changes depends largely on the relative role of local adaptation, migration and drift. Colour polymorphic grasshoppers constitute an ideal model system to study natural selection and local adaptation. Using ecological genetics we aim to assess (i) the ability of grasshoppers to adapt to land-use intensities and (ii) the role of intraspecific genetic and phenotypic diversity for population persistence.

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Title: Linking ecology and economy to quantify the value of plant diversity for ecosystem services in forest and grassland ecosystems

Applicants: Carsten F. Dormann (University of Freiburg)

We will use the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS to examine how ecosystem services (e.g. primary productivity and carbon sequestration) will react to climate change in the biodiversity exploratories. As a first step, we will analyze if and how ecosystem service provision differs with land-use and species composition in forest and grassland ecosystems. In a second step, we will conduct an economic evaluation of the identified differences in ecosystem service provision.

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Title: Drought-nutrient interactions in plants: their role for differential drought effects with land-use in grasslands

Applicants: Bettina Engelbrecht, Leonor Alvarez-Cansino, Eunyoung Jung (Universitaet Bayreuth)

Drought effects on plant diversity and ecosystem function in grasslands differ with land use. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms, we propose to examine the role of the complex ecophysiological interactions of drought and nutrients (fertilization). Interspecific differences of their effects for whole-plant performance should have pervasive consequences at the community level.

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Title: Population dynamics of ant communities in dependence of land use intensity

Applicants: Heike Feldhaar (University of Beyreuth), Thomas Schmitt (University of Würzburg)

Small population sizes in marginal habitats may influence population dynamics by altering species traits. Ant populations in marginal habitats should show a higher colony turnover and smaller colonies whose workers have smaller body sizes. Additionally a reduction in genetic variability and recognition cues may alter aggression levels and intra- as well as interspecific interactions.

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Title: Biodiversity and functional role of protists in the bacterial and fungal energy channels in forest soils

Applicants: Anna Maria Fiore-Donno, Michael Bonkowski (University of Cologne)

Extensive high-throughput sequencing data about the diversity, community composition and distribution of bacteria and fungi are available from the forest plots of the Biodiversity Exploratories, but their protist consumers are wanting. Protists are mainly known as bacterial feeders, but increasing evidence show that they can have a significant effect on fungal communities. We will use Illumina sequencing to assess the diversity of dominant groups of protists and apply multivariate statistic and network analyses to identify their roles in the bacterial and fungal energy channels.

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Title: Conservation and sustainable use of grassland and forest

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Applicants: Markus Fischer (University of Bern)

This project will synthesize information concerning conservation biology and concerning ecosystem services and the sustainability of their use. On the one hand it will assess the rarity and habitat specificity of species, and, based on co-occurrence analyses, environmental variables and stakeholder perspectives, it will identify umbrella, indicator and flagship species for different taxa and assess the conservation value of differently used ecosystems. On the other hand it will define ecosystem-service bundles considering different stakeholder perspectives and it will analyse to which degree they are provided and used for grassland and forest ecosystems of different use, diversity and conservation value. The project will largely built on available data on biodiversity and ecosystem processes and it will combine them with new stakeholder-based information.

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Title: The impact of land use intensity on functional richness and ecosystem services: the importance of pollination, predation and parasitism of wasps and bees.

Applicants: Markus Franzén, Josef Settele, Oliver Schweiger (UFZ Halle)

The proposed project will study wasps and wild bees (Hymenoptera: Aculeata). Field work will be performed using pan traps, observations and counting of nests. We will explore the amount of pollen plants (for pollinators), prey (for predators) and hosts (for parasites) that is required to produce one offspring and viable populations. We will be able to quantify the ecosystem service impact of single species and whole communities. The purpose is to study how functional diversity and ecosystem services changes over a land use gradient and the consequences of these changes. For this purpose we will use bee and wasp abundance, richness, their life history traits and resource requirements.

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Title: Influence of land use and climatic conditions on the phenology of vocal activity of birds and insects

Applicants: Dr. Karl-Heinz Frommolt (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Prof. M. Scherer-Lorenzen (University Freiburg)

Long term automatic recordings of soundscapes collected in all experimental plots of the three exploratories should be used to study the phenology of song activity. Occurrence of species will be detected using adapted acoustic pattern recognition algorithms. We expect effects of micro- and macroclimatic conditions as well as habitat quality on the onset and duration of periods of high vocal activity connected with reproduction of bird and insect species.

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Title: Trifolium RNA analysis to screen character heterogeneity (Tratsch II)

Applicants: Birgit Gemeinholzer, Volker Wissemann, Annette Becker (JLU Gießen)

In Tratsch I we showed that Trifolium pratense responds to mowing or grazing with specific morphological and compensatory changes. Further, we identified genes that are differentially expressed between plots and others, that show a mowing-specific response. We propose to (1) extend our data collection and analysis to all Exploratories, (2) correlate differential gene expression with environmental data, (3) analyze quantitative compensatory effects in respect to a change of inflorescences in mowed plants, and (4) carry out functional analysis of the mowing-response genes.

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Title: FuncNet – Land-use effects on functional trait networks and consequences for ecosystem processes

Applicants: Martin M. Gossner (Technische Universität München)

Species interactions are mediated by species traits. In the project a functional trait characterization of insect species will be combined with plant trait databases and a plant-herbivore interaction data base, to build functional herbivore (phytophagous and xylophagous) – plant networks. I will study how land-use intensity affects trait-based interaction networks and the consequences of changes in interaction networks for community-based processes such as herbivory and wood decomposition.

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Title: Biodiversity and ecosystem function scaling relationships along gradients of land-use intensity.

Applicants: Stan Harpole (Martin-Luther-Universität-Halle-Wittenberg), Christiane Roscher (UFZ Halle)

The impact of human land-use activities contributes to biodiversity loss and changes in ecosystem functions, which can be scale-dependent and non-linear. Focusing on changes in nutrient limitation, we will overlay a factorial N and phosphorus addition experiment on the land-use intensity gradient, testing the prediction that increasing land-use intensity, corresponding to increasing N inputs, will increase the importance of P limitation, with interactive effects on biodiversity scaling relationships and ecosystem function.

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Title: Understanding the contribution of functional traits of individual fungal species to ecosystem functions

Applicants: Stefan Hempel (FU Berlin)

In ecology attempts are made to link diversity data with ecosystem functions using functional traits of species. Trait data for the important group of soil inhabiting saprobic fungi is currently almost absent. We propose to apply high throughput culturing and screening in order to acquire functional trait information for a significant number of fungal isolates. We will link this information with molecular diversity data to understand the contribution of fungal diversity to the variations of ecosystem functions along the land use gradient.

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Title: Influence of land use intensity on the decomposition rate of dead mammals in conjunction with the diversity of the carcass associated insect and microbial communities

Applicants: Christian von Hoermann, Sandra Steiger, Manfred Ayasse (Ulm)

Our previous work in forest habitats has shown that the decay rate of animal biomass is dependent on cadaver insects, abiotic factors and land use intensity. We will extend our study (Project “NecroPig”) on grass-land plots and measure decay rate and flow of nutrients into soil. Further, we will analyze cadaver insect diversity and cadaver inhabiting microbes as well as the cadaver volatiles they produce and their function in attraction of decomposer insects. We will collaborate with other projects of the Biodiversity Exploratories.

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Title: BELongDead - Fungal Functional Diversity (BLD-FFD-HZG II): Fungal and bacterial structural and functional diversity in coarse woody debris of a replicated dead wood experiment

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Martin Hofrichter (TU Dresden), Prof. Dr. Francois Busçot (UFZ Halle), Dr. Harald Kellner (TU Dresden), Dr. Claus Bässler (Nationalpark Bayrischer Wald)

With this proposal we aim to continue our analysis of community changes and activities of microorganisms during wood decomposition of 13 tree species in the artificial BELongDead setup, to identify and quantify changes under different forest managements. In united efforts with groups from Bayreuth, Bochum, Leipzig, Coburg, Göttingen and Munich we plan to correlate microbial and arthropod species diversity, transcriptional and proteomic patterns with ecosystem processes on the wood-soil interface.

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Title: Effects of disturbance and seed addition on plant community assembly and ecosystem functions

Applicants: Norbert Hölzel, Ute Hamer, Till Kleinebecker (University Münster)

In ESCAPE II we will use the SADE experiment to investigate whether plant diversity in grasslands is seed and/or microsite limited and whether ecosystem resilience is bolstered by original or raised plant species richness along the land-use intensity gradient. In a joint complementary monitoring with the botany core project we will continue the regular measurement of important ecosystem functions such as biomass quality, nutrient retention and drought resistance, and coordinate research of other contributing projects at the SADE plots.

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Title: Influence of structural and functional microbial diversity on nutrient cycles during wood decomposition using metaproteomics

Applicants: Dr. Nico Jehmlich (UFZ Leipzig)

To understand the functional consequences of biodiversity changes as result of management practices, we will perform environmental metaproteome analysis of decomposing wood from 13 temperate tree species in an artificial setup (BELongDead). In a joint experiment with groups from Bayreuth, Bochum, Zittau, Halle and Coburg, metaproteomics will be correlated with metatranscriptomics, species diversity, enzymes, physico-chemical factors and processes in decaying wood and subjacent soil. The presence and abundance of secreted proteins as indicator of microbial activity will further help to understand the contribution of functional microbial groups on wood decay.

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Title: Relationship between soil structure and soil biodiversity in grasslands (BIOSTRUC II)

Applicants: Joschko, M. (ZALF), Kuka, K. (JKI), Illerhaus, B. (BAM), Hildebrandt, T. B., Fritsch, G. (IZW):

The basic hypothesis to be tested in this study is that soil structure in grasslands assessed by means of X-ray computed tomography and microtomography is closely linked to soil biodiversity over a wide range of systematic groups. We further assume that soil structural heterogeneity is also positively related to C sequestration rates as affected by the diversity of soil biota, especially soil fauna. The hypotheses will be tested on all MIP grassland sites including artificially compacted subplots, in close collaboration with Wurst/Sonnemann and other groups. Special emphasis will be laid upon spatial analyses of relationships, on the local as well as regional level.

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Title: TRANSPLANT – Plant ecotypes and land use intensity as driver for the plant associated microbiome of Dactylis glomerata

Applicants: Jasmin Joshi (Universität Potsdam), Michael Bonkowski (Universität Köln), Matthias Rillig (Frei Universität Berlin), Michael Schloter (Technische Universität München)

The genome associated with plants can be considered as the “second genome” of plants as the functions provided by bacteria, archaea, fungi and other microorganisms are essential for plant fitness as well as the resistance towards biotic and abiotic stressors. Thus plants are able to shape their own microbiomes depending to their needs.

This has been shown for the level of plant species, but has so been never proven for the ecotypes of selected plant species, growing in different environments. Differing ecotypes of D. glomerata, a grass that can be found in all grassland plots of the exploratories, have been identified in dependency to land use intensity. It is the aim of this study to identify core microbiomes associated to selected D. glomerata ecotypes, when plants are transplanted between different exploratories as well as between different plots with differing land use intensity of the same exploratory. We propose that independent from the plot the microbiomes of seeds as well as endophytes will be comparable, whereas the microbiome of the rhizosphere will show strong adaptation to the site conditions (climate, soil type, land use intensity).

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Title: Land-use effects on plant-soil feedbacks and their consequences for plant species diversity

Applicants: Jasmin Joshi, Johannes Heinze (Universität Potsdam)

With greenhouse and field experiments, (working on all grassland and forest MIPs along the land-use gradient, in all three Exploratories), we want to investigate the effect of land-use intensification on plant-soil feedbacks and their influence on plant species competitive ability, and thus species diversity.

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Title: Linking organismal and genetic diversity of floral microbiomes with ecosystem properties and functional plant traits

Applicants: Robert R. Junker (University of Salzburg), Alexander Keller (University of Würzburg)

Bacterial communities associated to above-ground plant parts are crucial for plant health, but determinants of their diversity are unknown. We will investigate the organismal,

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functional, and genetic α-, β- and γ- diversity of floral microbiomes as a function of land use, plant diversity, and functional flower traits such as floral scents in order to understand links between these different levels of biodiversity.

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Title: Impact of land use intensity on the chemical communication between flowers and flower visitors in grasslands

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Andreas Jürgens (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

The impact of land use intensity on plant-pollinator interactions has been documented. However, different forms of land use are associated with volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions that have the potential to interfere with plant-animal communication and to disrupt mutualistic interactions. The goal of the proposed research is to explore the changes of VOC diversity of grassland flowering communities potentially correlated with different land use regimes and consequences for pollination.

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Title: Microbial Colonization Strategies and Resource Partitioning in Soils under Different Land-Use Intensities

Applicants: Ellen Kandeler, Sven Marhan (Hohenheim)

This project will identify mechanisms that shape small-scale spatial patterns of soil microorganisms and link them to the variation in land-use intensity: (1) colonization of new surfaces (minerals, organo-mineral complexes and litter) and (2) resource partitioning between bacteria and fungi in detritusphere and rhizosphere. In addition, we will use soil samples derived from the SADE (Seed and Disturbance Experiment) to understand the impact of anthropogenic management of grassland on soil microbial communities.

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Title: The effect of land use intensity on the diversity and abundance of functional genes in biological soil crust communities with emphasis on the transformation processes of nitrogen and phosphorus

Applicants: Prof. Ulf Karsten (Uni Rostock), Co-PI Prof. Michael Schloter (TU München)

We will continue our so far successful project on ecological functions of biological soil crusts in the Biodiversity Exploratories as influenced by land use intensities. Hitherto, we focused on the biodiversity of soil crusts and their potential in biogeochemical phosphorus turnover. In the next phase we plan to link phosphorous turnover and nitrogen cycling to the abundance and diversity of genes coding for selected functions driving N and P

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transformation processes and relate the data to the structure of the crust communities (who is doing what?). In addition, we plan a close collaboration with the Rueß-project concerning crust trophic web structure and function (e.g. Collembola; who is eating what?).

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Title: BECycles – Element cycling as a function of land-use intensity and biodiversity in the Biodiversity Exploratories (2017-2020)

Applicants: Martin Kaupenjohann, Beate Michalzik, Jan Siemens, Wolfgang Wilcke (Berlin, Jena, Giessen, Karlsruhe)

BECycles will apply to continue the long-term observation of the cycling of water, C, N, P, H+, and base metals on all VIP plots of the Biodiversity Exploratories in order to create a time series of 10 yr considered as a critical minimum length to sufficiently account for interannual variation. We will continue to determine element fluxes with rainfall, throughfall, stemflow, litterfall, and soil solution in biweekly resolution to explore the relationship between land-use intensity and associated biodiversity and the element cycle and its response to the on-going environmental changes. For the new phase, we propose to determine the land-use intensity and biodiversity control of the C and nutrient cycles by

(i) complementing the regular measurements with three highly resolved, intensive measurement campaigns in forests and grasslands to explore spatial and temporal patters of the element fluxes,

(ii) conducting laboratory experiments to improve our understanding of the P cycle,

(iii) deepening our understanding of the land-use and biodiversity control of dissolved organic matter quality in forest throughfall with the help of innovative chemical and microbial methods

(iv) addressing the depth extension of fast water and element fluxes with stemflow in the stemfoot areas of the forests as a little considered component of the ecosystem element budget, and

(v) exploring C release and N retention in soil under forest and grassland with the help of 13C and 15N tracer experiments in microcosms run in the laboratory (no tracer application in the field).

With the proposed work, we also plan to explore scientific connections with the DFG SPP 1685 “Ecosystem nutrition: Forest strategies for limited phosphorus resources” (SPP 1685)”, the SFB 1076 “AquaDiva – Understanding the links between the surface and subsurface biogeosphere”, and DFG FOR 1451 “Exploring mechanisms underlying the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning” to which the applicants contribute actively.

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Title: Consequences of land-use on solitary bee microbiota composition and function

Applicants: Alexander Keller, Sara D. Leonhardt (University of Würzburg)

When addressing land-use effects on the pollination system, a major player has so far been mainly ignored: microbes. Pollen, nectar and nesting materials are influenced by land-use, but also determine the microbiota of solitary bee adults, larvae and nests with consequences for host health. Goal of our study is to identify effects of land-use, landscape and foraging on microbial associates and functions in bees, on the stability of the mutualism and on disease vectorization.

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Title: Feedbacks between plant species performance, invertebrate fauna and soil extracellular enzyme kinetics

Applicants: Till Kleinebecker, Ute Hamer, David Ott (University Münster)

Soil extracellular enzyme C:N:P nutrient acquisition activities will be measured in plant species-specific rhizospheres of “winner” and “looser” species with respect to land-use intensity in all grassland experimental plots and linked to the nutrient stoichiometry of the respective plant roots and shoots. Moreover feedbacks with the above- and belowground invertebrate community will be assessed (stoichiometry, diversity and biomass density). The monitoring of community biomass quality will be continued.

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Title: Coupling Enhanced Remote Sensing Metrics, Radiation, and Temperature to Monitor Local Biodiversity”

Applicants: Christoph Kleinn (Göttingen)

Forest management, as well as treefall, alter the forest canopy. These canopy openings along with the spatial gap pattern influence the illumination and temperature conditions at the forest floor. This variation in local conditions is possibly positively related to the patterns of biodiversity.

The project will contribute to an enhanced understanding of remote sensing metrics for monitoring biodiversity. We will study small scale temperature and illumination variations in relation to the vegetation structure as described by LiDAR metrics. Therefore, we will measure transmissivity and surface temperature on a systematic grid on the forest VIPs and relate the measurements to the corresponding LiDAR metrics. To understand the effects of incoming radiation and surface temperature patterns a sample based ground vegetation and tree regeneration survey will be conducted on the same systematic grid. To complete the

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existing remote sensing data sets, we plan to take focused and synchronized time-series of high resolution thermal and optical imagery using a UAV (collaboration with core-project “Instrumentation and Remote Sensing”). Finally, we will create forest floor illumination maps of VIPs which will be related to the diversity of various taxa in cooperation with other projects.

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Title: Nitrous oxide emissions and uptake in relation to biodiversity, land use intensity and disturbance

Applicants: Klaus-Holger Knorr (University of Münster)

As nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas it is important to understand emissions and uptake from ecosystems not only in relation to soil moisture and nutritional status but also under different biodiversity, land use, or after disturbance. Within this project, N2O fluxes and soil concentrations along with stable isotopic signatures will be determined on the SADE plots, in collaboration with the SADE project, projects involving element cycles, and projects addressing microbial communities.

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Title: Multiple ecosystem services and the impacts of land use and biodiversity on the landscape scale over time

Applicants: Prof. Dr Thomas Koellner (University of Bayreuth)

The existing data in the three exploratories provide an unique opportunity to quantify synergies and trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services and to assess impacts of land use intensities and biodiversity on large scales. For this purpose we aim to use geostatistical models employing sampled long-term data. We expect gaining new insights in underlying cause-effect chains controlling ecosystem services across years on the landscape scale.

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Title: BVOC Consuming Microbe Biodiversity in the N-cycle by Massive Cultivation

Applicants: PD Dr. Steffen Kolb (ZALF - Müncheberg), PD. Dr. Marcus Horn (University of Hannover), Prof Dr. Jürgen Augustin (ZALF - Müncheberg), Dr. Andreas Ulrich (ZALF - Müncheberg), Dr. Undine Berendt (ZALF - Müncheberg)

Plants emit biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) which end up in the atmosphere or are consumed by microorganisms in the rhizosphere. Denitrifiers but also microorganisms with non-denitrifying but nitrate reducing metabolism conduct this sink function under oxygen-limiting conditions. It needs to be tested if those are favored in intensively managed sites. The projects aims for a massive cultivation approach in all very intensive plots (VIPs) of

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all three Exploratories (Chorin-Schorfheide, Hainich, Schwäbische Alb). Metabolic capabilities will be identified by genome sequencing, MALDI TOF and process studies (GC, CRDS) on the isolates. To answer the question if denitrifiers or non-denitrifying nitrate reducers are important BVOC sinks in the rhizosphere, cultivation-dependent information will be linked into the ecosystem context by functional biodiversity analysis employing NextGen Sequencing of functional gene markers.

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Title: Integration and Explorative Analysis of Data for Synthesis Tasks

Applicants: Birgitta König-Ries (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena), Doris Dransch (GFZ Potsdam)

The Biodiversity Exploratories Information System contains a large amount of base data about plots, including climate data, inventory data, soil properties, aerial images, and land use information. In this project, we aim to build a tool that enables scientists to take full advantage of the data to answer one of the main questions of the exploratories, namely the influence of land use on biodiversity. The tool will be built upon recent computer science concepts from exploratory data analysis, data mining, and data integration. By allowing an explorative analysis of base data against selected target parameters (e.g., species abundance or traits), the tool will support scientists in finding patterns in these relationships as the basis for hypothesis formulation. We are interested in collaborators with a background in biodiversity synthesis.

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Title: Dependence of endophytic fungus - grass symbioses on land-use intensity (DEFENSE)

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Jochen Krauss (University of Würzburg)

Gras endophytes produce herbivore-toxic alkaloids with negative effects on insect pests and on on livestock. We will continue our project on all grassland EPs from the last phase testing new topics, e.g. (i) which additional alkaloids are produced in the pathway, (ii) temporal dynamic of infections, (iii) endophyte diversity in the two abundant grass species Lolium perenne and Festuca pratensis, (iv) interactions between Epichloe endophytes and other foliar endophytes.

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Title: Soil climate and management impact on plant population dynamics in grassland sites (JKI/UFZ)

Applicants: Katrin Kuka, Uwe Franko (UFZ Halle/Saale)

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The GRASSMIND-CANDY model approach will be utilized to simulate the plant biomass development of grassland sites and the CN and water fluxes depending on soil parameters, climate conditions and management intensities. The aim of this planned project is to integrate different data sets from different project phases for a better understanding of the plant-soil-climate relationship, to enhance the LUI calculation and to make predictions of the plant development for possible future scenarios.

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Title: Quantifying Land-Use-Intensity (LUI) and Hemeroby basted on different approaches and their coupling - remote sensing traits- experimantal approach and semantics

Applicants: Dr. rer nat. hab. Angela Lausch (UFZ - Leipzig)

The goals of the proposal are as follows:

(i) To quantify land-use intensity and hemeroby based on species traits and their change depend on LUI by remote sensing techniques.

(ii) We are going to couple the exploratories measurements with additional experiments in long-term plant traits spectral labor and the Global Change Experimental Facility (GCEF)

(iii)For complex understanding of whole systems we want couple important complex data of exploratories, labor and GCEF with methods of linked open data – LOD and semantic.

(iv) Finally we develop a user-friendly web-based platform for analysis and assessing LUI on biodiversity.

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Title: Assessing actual evapotranspiration and vegetation structure using an UAV

Applicants: Gunnar Lischeid, Philipp Rauneker (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Müncheberg, and University of Potsdam)

Remote sensing using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is a rather recent technology allowing high spatial resolution and nearly arbitrary spatial resolution at low costs. However, high-quality data to be used in a quantitative way require specific workflows that are now established in our group. We would apply that approach to assess vegetation structure and actual evapotranspiration of the plots of the three Exploratories at regular time intervals.

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Title: Disentangling the drivers of ecosystem multifunctionality

Applicants: Peter Manning, Imke Schmitt, Miklós Bálint (BiK-F, Senckenberg, Frankfurt)

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Synthesis work on the Exploratories has utilized structural equation modeling to demonstrate that land use impacts on grassland ecosystem multifunctionality operate via direct effects, and indirectly via changes to plant diversity and functional composition. However, these effects cannot be fully disentangled using statistical approaches, and the role of microbial community change has not been estimated. This project will use experimental methods to address this by 1. Altering plant diversity and functional composition within the MIP plots, and 2. Manipulating plant diversity, plant functional composition, microbial community composition and land use intensity in microcosms.

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Title: Does wider landscape diversity influence plot-level ecosystem functioning?

Applicants: Peter Manning (BiK-F, Senckenberg, Frankfurt)

This project will test the hypothesis that the ecosystem functioning of a grassland plot is higher for any given level of land use intensity when it is embedded within a biodiverse landscape. This is due to two mechanisms a) faster recovery of plot biodiversity following disturbances (e.g. mowing) as a result of greater dispersal and b) the subsidy of motile ecosystem service providers (e.g. from pollinators) from more diverse surrounding areas. These hypotheses will be tested by synthesizing existing data with new data gathered using seed traps and biodiversity survey of the areas surrounding the grassland EP plots.

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Title: Connecting ecology, phylogeny and evolution: Understanding oribatid mite community dynamics over time along a forest land-use gradient (ForestMites)

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Mark Maraun (Göttingen)

Understanding the community structure of soil animal taxa is still in its infancy. Here, we aim at understanding oribatid mite communities along a forest land-use gradient in Germany (1) by mapping occurrences and traits on phylogenies which will reveal if deterministic factors, history of chance are important structuring factors, (2) by studying fluctuations in these communities over long time periods, (3) by studying the change of oribatid mite communities in dead wood over a period of 10 years. Analyzing these time series is possible since we participate in this project since more than 6 years.

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Title: Soils as source and sink for methane – influence of land-use intensity on functional diversity of methane-cycling microorganisms

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Applicants: Dr. Sven Marhan (University of Hohenheim), Prof. Dr. Tim Urich (University of Greifswald), PD Dr. Steffen Kolb (Müncheberg)

The project partners will investigate the influence of management intensity on methane fluxes and associated microorganisms in grassland and forest soils (MIP-plots). For selected sites, which show especially high and low methane production and oxidation rates, we will link flux data to the diversity, abundance and activity of methanogenic and methanotrophic microorganisms in different soil depths using e.g. methane-cycle targeted, integrated meta-omics.

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Title: Social-ecological conditions of land use decisions

Applicants: Dr. Marion Mehring (Frankfurt a. M.)

Land use change is a major driver of changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, little is known of the underlying societal processes and motives of land use decisions. In order to better understand the social-ecological conditions of land use decisions, an interdisciplinary research approach will be applied, combining empirical social research (e.g. open and standardized interviews on perception and valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services) and integrated modelling methods (e.g. Bayesian networks, Agent-based models).

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Title: Ecological role of odour diversity in relation to land use intensity

Applicants: Torsten Meiners (FU Berlin)

Previous studies revealed that the relationship between plant species diversity and vegetation odour diversity of grassland sites strongly depends on the regional scale. I will now alter experimentally the chemical diversity of habitat odours in order to identify odour diversity - or other neighbouring plant mediated, direct or indirect effects on Plantago lanceolata and higher trophic levels. This study will be conducted over a land use gradient and on different regional scales in the Biodiversity Exploratories.

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Title: Ecological mechanisms underpinning species diversity changes along land-use intensity in temperate forests from tree to landscape scales

Applicants: PD Dr. Jörg Müller (Nationalpark Bavarian Forest, Grafenau), Prof. Dr. P. Krzystek (University of Applied Science, Munich), Dr. Shaun Levick (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena)

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Land-use intensity in forests heavily alters the architecture of forest. This affects the composition of animal species, beyond the composition of plants. The ability to penetrate the uppermost layer of forest canopy with Airborne Laser Scanning enables quantifying not only the change in taxonomic diversity along the structural gradients of the forests in the exploratories, but it also opens the possibility to assess the mechanisms behind this loss using functional/phylogenetic dissimilarities.

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Title: Response of vertebrate assemblages to land-use intensity across one agriculture-forest land-use gradient

Applicants: PD Dr. Jörg Müller (Nationalpark Bavarian Forest, Grafenau)

Vertebrates play a major role in temperate ecosystems. We will assess the assemblages of small, medium-sized and large vertebrates along a full land-use gradient ranging from intensive grassland to set aside forests. Sampling will be conducted using passive inventory methods (camera traps and acoustic recording unites). Habitat use of vertebrates will be analyzed in relation to structural vegetation data and resource availability to test hypothesis on the direct and indirect effects of land-use intensity.

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Title: Whole-genome epigenetic and genetic structure in managed and unmanaged European beech populations

Applicants: Dr. Markus Müller, Prof. Dr. Konstantin Krutovsky (Georg-August-University Göttingen)

Whole-genome restriction enzyme associated DNA (RAD) sequencing (RADseq) will be used to investigate the genetic diversity throughout the beech genome in managed and unmanaged adult beech populations. RADseq in combination with bisulfite sequencing (BSseq) will be also used to genotype epigenetic markers (methylated cytosine nucleotides) and to study epigenetic memory in beech seedling populations, which originate from two different seed years, and demonstrate significantly different phenotypic characteristics. The RADseq data will also be used as genetic reference structure for the analysis of the epigenetic data.

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Title: Impact of land use on diversity, community composition and mobile genetic element repertoire of antibiotic-resistant soil bacteria

Applicants: Dr. Heiko Nacke (University of Göttingen)

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Antibiotic resistance plays a key role in competition between the extraordinarily diverse microorganisms inhabiting soil. In this project, the diversity and community composition of antibiotic-resistant soil bacteria will be assessed along land use gradients. In addition, distribution and features of antibiotic resistance-encoding mobile genetic elements, which in some cases allow gene transfer even between distantly related bacteria, will be investigated.

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Title: The effect of forest management intensity, tree species and fungal- bacterial diversity on resource partitioning and gas emissions in dead wood logs

Applicants: Prof. Dr. habil. Matthias Noll (University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Coburg), Dr. Tiemo Kahl (University of Freiburg)

We aim to observe resource partitioning in wood decomposition between and within fungal and bacterial species by the aid of stable carbon isotopes. We hypothesize that resource partitioning in dead wood is driven by space and time and that it is dominated by a small set of fungi (drivers) that deter-mine the fungal/bacterial community composition.

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Title: Ecosystem halogen cycling depending on land use intensity and biodiversity (HALOBIO)

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Yvonne Oelmann (University of Tübingen)

The effect of halogens (Cl, Br, F, I) in the environment might range from toxic (polyhalogenated organic compounds) to beneficial (F) for organisms – depending on the absolute concentrations. Irrespective of concentration ranges, some halogen ions e.g., Cl and Br, have long been assumed to act conservatively during the passage through an ecosystem i.e., with negligible interactions such as biological cycling. Recently, this paradigm was challenged by several authors who found biological transformation of inorganic Cl and Br to organic Cl and Br by de novo formation of organic Cl and Br in the canopy of forests and by chlorination/bromination of organic matter in soil. Management influences halogen inputs into ecosystems as these are frequently contained as accessories in fertilizer or even supplied directly to animals in the field (lick salt) while biodiversity was shown to increase plant productivity and soil organic matter storage and decomposition. Therefore, the fate and transformation of halogens in the ecosystem might depend on land use intensity and on biodiversity. My aims are to study land-use and biodiversity effects on (i) the fate of halogens in the ecosystem (plants, soil, ecosystem solutions), (ii) speciation of halogens in soil, and (iii) enzymatic transformation reactions of halogens in soil in all grassland and forest ecosystems of the Biodiversity Exploratories. The expected results will contribute to improve the basic understanding of halogen cycling in non-contaminated ecosystems and reveal the role of management and biodiversity both potentially yielding practical recommendations for land owners.

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Title: INverTebrate communities and Ecosystem processes in Response To disturbance, plant diversity and land-use

Applicants: David Ott, Christoph Scherber (University of Münster)

We will use established plots of the SADE project to investigate how responses of above- and belowground invertebrates to seed addition and disturbance are modified by land-use intensity. These investigations will include the assessment of invertebrate diversity and density as well as measurements of ecosystem functions, such as decomposition, herbivory, parasitism and pollination. Further, we will compare invertebrate community structure among grassland and forest systems (collaborating with LitterLinks & ForestMites).

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Title: Partitioning of Prokaryotic Functional Diversity under Different Land Use (ProFunD)

Applicants: Jörg Overmann (Leibniz-Institut DSMZ Braunschweig), Michael Friedrich (Universität Bremen)

Links between functional biodiversity of Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, and plant biodiversity/productivity, edaphic factors, and types of land use will be elucidated. Factors controling organic carbon transfer from plants to target bacteria are assessed by SIP labeling of root exudates and plant litter. Key functional marker genes of bacteria involved will be identified by SIP plus metatranscriptomics and verified using representative bacterial isolates. Key functional genes will be quantified across all EPs, and their environmental controls determined by multivariate statistical analysis.

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Title: Microbial Data Synthesis and Meta-analysis for the Biodiversity Exploratories (MicroSYSteM)

Applicants: Jörg Overmann (DSMZ Braunschweig), Ellen Kandeler (Universität Stuttgart), Rolf Daniel (Universität Göttingen), Michael Bonkowski (Universität Köln), Francois Buscot (UFZ Halle/Leipzig)

This collaborative project aims at the improved synthesis and modeling of data for soil microbial communities in order to elucidate their links to edaphic parameters, plant communities and land use. The tools and approaches that have been developed specifically for microbial data during the first funding phase address the quantification of change of biotic interactions (numbers, strengths) at varying ecological conditions. These approaches will be developed further and applied to dynamical equations in analyzing ecosystem stability, spatial patterns using Turing’s self-organization theory, and fitness changes of communities along ecological gradients by multiple-level Price equations.

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Title: The impact of forest management intensity on the mycelial interaction types between mycorrhizal, dark septate and saprotrophic fungi

Applicants: Rodica Pena (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

I will investigate the dynamic of interaction types between mycorrhizal/dark septate and saprotrophic fungi in the rhizosphere and bulk soil and their effect on litter decomposition and soil carbon storage. The mycelia will be collected following the setting used in proEMM but including the rhizosphere and a time-series sequential harvests (150 forest plots). Isotope (15N, 13C) labelling greenhouse experiments will also be planned.

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Title: Impacts of forestry measures on leaf litter decomposition via priority effects

Applicants: Dr. habil. Derek Peršoh (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

Our results indicate that rapid turnover of the endophytic community during the period of leaf-fall masks impacts of forestry measures. These are later reflected by the 1-year old beech litter community. Functional diversity of the community in falling and decaying leaves will be assessed by meta’omics at appropriate small temporal scales. This approach aims at linking priority effects in community assembly to the decomposition process.

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Title: CanopyConnections – Land-use effects on interactions and ecosystem functioning in the forest canopy

Applicants: Jana S. Petermann (University of Salzburg), Wolfgang W. Weisser (Technische Universität München)

Forest canopies are unchartered territory, at least when it comes to their food webs and ecosystem processes. Here we will, based on our previous project on tree-hole metacommunities, extend this research into the rest of the canopy habitat. We ask (1) how forest management affects canopy food webs and ecosystem functions via canopy structure, light availability, tree-hole availability, the availability of further habitats, resource availability for herbivores and tree-hole communities, (2) if forest management affects canopy communities more strongly than understory communities, and (3) how much canopy communities contribute to forest nutrient budgets and to ecosystem functioning in forests of different management.

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Title: Functional diversity of mycorrhiza in relation to land-use changes and ecosystem functions / Code ECTOMYC

Applicants: Prof. Dr. A. Polle (Uni Göttingen)

The goal of this project is to investigate ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) community structures in relation to ecosystem functions and land-use intensity. Our preliminary studies revealed shifts in fungal communities associated with roots in the three Exploratories under different environmental and land use conditions. Here we hypothesize that these shifts are related to the impact of forest management on tree diversity. To test this hypothesis we will analyse root-associated fungi by NGS in the centralized soil collection (150 forest plot) together with core 9 (F. Buscot/T.Wubet) in relation to below-ground root diversity, root life traits and root chemical (=nutrient elements) traits.

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Title: The definite infection risk with avian malaria of great tits born/raised in differently managed forests (forest MIP or EP level)

Applicants: Dr Swen C Renner (BOKU)

Adult birds with haemosporidian infections are mobile and therefore might have imported an infection from elsewhere. Birds born on the plot have a different infection risk (in terms of land use: "definite" risk) and infection history then adult birds. Therefore young birds represent the actual situation of infection risk on plot level. To increase predictability of host-vector-parasite interaction models in reference to land use (forest management), I propose to set up at least on MIP level (prefer EP) nest boxes and (1) determine the productive success in relation to land use for great tits, (2) parasite infections of young birds, which were raised on the plot and therefore show the definite infection risk in reference to land use, and (3) assess the role of definite vectors.

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Title: Land-use effects on longevity and anatomical structures of forb species

Applicants: Christiane Roscher (UFZ Halle)

Plant community assembly results from the population dynamics of individual species, but little is known about the age structure of plant populations. We propose to study growth rings and stem anatomical features of forb species in grasslands and forests to explore the effects of land-use intensity, environmental variation, plant diversity and neighborhood identity on the (1) longevity of plant individuals (or rhizomes), and (2) annual growth ring width.

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Title: Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids as quality nutrients in soil food webs – implications of land use on resources derived from biological soil crusts

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Liliane Rueß (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids derived from primary producers can affect reproduction and growth in consumers and thereby act as drivers of food web dynamics. Biological soil crusts form a major source of these biochemical nutrients in soil ecosystems, and land use has the potential to alter their organismic and thus lipid composition. The implications on soil food webs will be investigated using nematode communities as model.

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Title: Evolution of plant phenotypic plasticity in response to grassland management

Applicants: Dr. Niek Scheepens, Dr. Madalin Parepa (University of Tübingen)

Mowing, grazing and fertilization are expected to favor and thus select for particular types of phenotypic plasticity in plants, e.g. the ability to regrow after damage, and the ability to rapidly exploit temporary nutrient pulses. We thus expect plasticity to evolve in response to land use changes and land use intensification. We will test this prediction across several common grassland species through a series of controlled experiments with plant materials from all grassland EPs.

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Title: BEsound2 - can acoustic diversity indices serve as explanatory variables for BEF studies?

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Michael Scherer-Lorenzen, Dr. Sandra Müller (Universität Freiburg)

The main focus of BEsound was to test the relationship between acoustic diversity, land use intensity and organismic diversity. We now suggest testing the suitability of acoustic indices to explain ecosystem functions and services. Similarly to the use of functional diversity indices based on morphological or chemical traits, acoustic diversity based on vocalisations will be used as explanatory variables in BEF studies.

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Title: Changes in soil food web structure of the decomposer system with land use intensity in forest systems

Applicants: Stefan Scheu (Georg August University Göttingen)

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The proposed project focuses on changes in soil food web structure with forest type / management across the three Biodiversity Exploratories. Three work packages will be investigated analysing (1) long-term dynamics of forest soil microbial and animal communities, including so far neglected groups such as enchytraeids and dipterans (all 25 intensively studied forest plots), (2) the trophic structure and trophic links in the fungal and bacterial energy channel using fatty acid and molecular gut content analysis, and (3) investigate the relative importance of niche vs. neutral processes for forest soil animal community assembly.

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Title: Influence of land use on plant health in natural grassland ecosystems

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Jan Schirawski (RWTH Aachen University)

Smut fungi are important biotrophic pathogens of cultivated crops and can infect members of the grass family. It has been suggested that field-edge growing wild grasses could serve as intermediate hosts to ensure fungal survival and spread outside of the agricultural growing season.

In this project, we want to assess plant health of grasses grown in different grassland ecosystems with different land use management strategies. This will serve two objectives. One is to find out whether land use management strategies affect the general health of different grasses and could thus influence the potential of the grassland to serve as a reservoir for crop-infecting pathogens. The second objective is to determine whether and which known pathogens of staple crops persist in these grassland ecosystems. In addition to monitoring of natural ecosystems, we will evaluate the developed hypotheses by field experiments where we will either sow staple crop seeds into defined areas of the different natural grassland ecosystems to increase the amount of potential host plants for a particular group of plant pathogens or challenge the ecosystem by addition of fungal spores of particular crop plants. These experiments will show in how far land use of natural grassland ecosystems affects the health of the inhabiting grasses and the ability of this particular ecosystem to function as reservoir of phytopathogenic fungi infecting agricultural field crops.

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Title: AvianFunDiv: Functional bird diversity, avian frugivory and invertebrate predation across forest management systems

Applicants: PD Dr. Matthias Schleuning, Prof. Dr. Katrin Böhning-Gaese, Dr. Eike Lena Neuschulz (Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt (Main))

The relationship between avian functional diversity and ecosystem functions is only poorly understood. We will quantify rates of frugivory and invertebrate predation by birds on the

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experimental forest plots using plasticine fruits and caterpillars. On the same plots, we will monitor bird diversity, in continuation of the former bird monitoring, and complementarily measure several validated functional traits of bird morphology on museum specimens.

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Title: Controls of N saturation assessed by hyperspectral remote sensing (NSAT)

Applicants: Sebastian Schmidtlein, Wolfgang Wilcke, (KIT)

Forest ecosystems of the Biodiversity Exploratories are presumably still N-limited as reflected e.g., by the retention of atmospheric N deposition in canopies. N saturation is likely to vary spatially driven in part by land-use intensity and associated biodiversity and with feedbacks for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We propose to test for local drivers of N saturation (site conditions, land-use intensity, associated species and diversity) using hyperspectral remote sensing and ground reference data on proxies of N saturation from all 150 experimental plots.

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Title: Interactions between biodiversity and soil erosion: Experimental and modelling approaches

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Thomas Scholten, Dr. Steffen Seitz, Dr. Philipp Goebes (Ort)

This project aims to investigate the interactions between biodiversity and soil erosion processes. Specific objectives are (i) a better understanding of the relationship between biodiversity (on the basis of indices, soil fauna abundance, number of vascular plants or soil crust species) and soil erosion mechanisms (splash, interrill and rill erosion), (ii) to measure total erosion rates for different forest and grassland management systems (FlexROPs, a new generation of runoff plots), and (iii) to compare them to modelled erosion rates (e.g. WEPP).

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Title: The role of Comammox (complete ammonia oxidation) and cyanate as energy source for nitrification in grassland soils under different pH and land use intensities

Applicants: Dr. Stefanie Schulz (Helmholtz Zentrum München), Prof. Dr. Michael Schloter (TU München)

In previous experiments we observed negative correlations of AOA abundance and ammonium concentrations and a positive correlation of AOA and Nitrospira in grassland ecosystems of the biodiversity exploratories (Stempfhuber et al., 2015b; Stempfhuber et al., 2014). Moreover, specific clades of AOA were affiliated to specific pH classes (Stempfhuber et al., 2015a). Based on recent publications (Daims et al., 2015; van Kessel et al., 2015;

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Palatinszky et al., 2015), we want to figure out if our previous findings are connected with a shift from a two-step towards a one-step nitrification or a shift from ammonium to cyanate as energy source. Especially cyanate is known as a component of many fertilizers and might become more important with increasing LUI.

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Title: Soil compaction and root herbivory

Applicants: Ilja Sonnemann, Susanne Wurst (Freie Universität Berlin)

Root herbivory is an important force in structuring plant communities. Effects of soil compaction on root herbivores may depend on body size. The proposed project aims to determine the impact of agricultural soil compaction on abundance and movement of as well as plant responses to insect versus nematode root feeders in grasslands. Research groups who like to investigate additional aspects of soil compaction are invited to join the planned compaction plots at the MIP sites.

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Title: Mechanistic understanding of the interplay between biodiversity, land-use and ecosystem functions in grassland sites

Applicants: Dr. Franziska Taubert (UFZ Leipzig), Prof. Dr. Andreas Huth (UFZ Leipzig)

The process- and individual-based grassland model GRASSMIND will be used to simulate the structure and dynamics of diverse grassland. The project’s aim is to use different data sets for understanding the interplay of species diversity (incl. individual plant interactions), management activities and grassland ecosystem functions (e.g. productivity, carbon storage in plant and roots). Our vision is to better project the future role of grasslands under a changing climate and land-use.

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Title: Disentangling the way land use intensity affects β-diversity of soil bacterial and fungal communities.

Applicants: Stavros D. Veresoglou (Freie Universität, Berlin)

Scaling up in microbial ecology is a particularly challenging task as often regional patterns differ considerably from local ones. In this project we are planning to implement a species accumulation curves approach specifically customized for systems where diversity estimates are incomplete. We will work with the twenty-seven grassland VIP plots and implement grid sampling.

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Title: Low-altitude aerial biodiversity assessment of grasslands.

Applicants: Dr. Jana Wäldchen (TU Ilmenau)

The assessment of plant diversity on grasslands and the continuous monitoring thereof are among the main challenges in research on grassland biodiversity, land use intensity and nature conservation due to their excessive cost, required expertise, and necessary time. To address this challenge, the goals of our project are (1) developing intelligent, aerial sampling strategies; (2) developing metrics describing plant diversity richness, structural diversity, and land-use intensity based on the captured data; and (3) evaluating sampling strategies and metrics with data captured by other projects of the biodiversity exploratories. The necessary low altitude, high-resolution imagery and accompanying sensor information will be captured on grasslands by unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) following adaptive sampling strategies. Latest image processing techniques will be incorporated to analyze the captured material. Our research will allow biodiversity assessments more rapidly and to a larger extend than today's manual methods.

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Title: Land use effects on life-history traits of oribatid mites in different forest and grassland microhabitats (OriTrait)

Applicants: Dr. Katja Wehner (TU Darmstadt)

We aim to investigate the impact of land use on density and diversity of oribatid mites in different forest and grassland microhabitats, including effects of disturbance in grasslands (SADE). We will focus on morphological and life-history traits (e.g. number of eggs carried in the oviducts per female), and how land use affects both intraspecific variation of traits and the overall trait composition at the community level.

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Title: The microbiome associated to wild bees, as influenced by land use intensity

Applicants: Wolfgang Weisser (Technische Universität München), Stefanie Schulz (Helmholtz Zentrum München), Sharon Zytynska (Technische Universität München), Michael Schloter Weisser (Technische Universität München)

It is well accepted that the gut microbiome of Eukaryotes is strongly driven by nutrition pattern of the host. In the proposed project we want to investigate if land intensity which strongly modulates diversity pattern of plants in grass land ecosystems can be considered as a major driver for the gut microbiome of wild bees. We propose that a reduced diversity of

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plants, often found as a consequence of increased land use intensity strongly modulates bacterial species richness in the gut of bees, which will have high impact on the overall fitness of the animals.

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Title: Structural and functional resilience of grassland soil communities (RESOILIENCE)

Applicants: Volkmar Wolters, Andrey Zaytsev (JLU Giessen)

RESOILIENCE aims at getting a deep mechanistic understanding of the biodiversity-related factors controlling structural and functional resilience of soil fauna communities. Our approach is based on the simultaneous analysis of numerical and trophic response/recovery of belowground food webs in grasslands to experimental disturbances in relation to changes of major soil processes. Important research questions include: Does management intensity alter the ability of the soil community to cope with external stress? How do differences in the response of different trophic levels to disturbance alter resilience and resistance? How is functional resilience related to structural features of the soil community? All grassland sites of the Biodiversity Exploratories will be studied.

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Title: A combined theoretical-experimental approach to studying the mechanistic basis of land-use - biodiversity relationships mediated by habitat heterogeneity

Applicants: Katja Tielbörger (University of Tübingen), Ronen Kadmon (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

We aim at utilizing a theoretical approach combined with extensive observations in the three Exploratories and closely related microcosm experiments with plants for studying the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes for species diversity. Though the empirical work will be focusing on plants, the model will be applicable to other taxa studied in the Exploratories and thus greatly increase the added value for the Exploratories. We will now also capitalize on field work within the Exploratories and thus add important data about habitat heterogeneity to the BEXIS data base.

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Title: Effects of land-use change on community composition in fragmented and newly created habitats

Applicants: Jan Thiele (Universität Münster)

We intend to analyse effects of habitat dynamics at the landscape scale, driven by historic land-use change, on plant and animal communities. Current diversity and functional

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composition may be affected by selective local extinction in fragmented habitats, while colonisation of newly created ecosystems, e.g. grasslands in Hainich, may be affected by the amount and connectivity of historic habitat. We will deliver landscape metrics and land-use trajectories over time for all BE sites and model effects on communities.

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Title: Functional root traits and their role in determining plant responses to land-use change

Applicants: Mark van Kleunen, Judy Simon (University of Konstanz)

Fertilizer application is an important land-use component that has changed the composition of many grassland communities in Europe. While all plant species require nitrogen for growth, some species take more advantage of increases in nitrogen availability than others. Here we propose to assess the functional root traits for the majority of plant species in the grassland plots. These traits will include morphological traits such as root diameter, specific root length and root foraging ability, as well as physiological traits such as the uptake rate of different inorganic and organic nitrogen compounds. These traits will then be linked to occurrence and abundance of the species in plots with different land-use intensities. Moreover, these important, but understudied, functional traits will improve estimates of functional diversity.