Selected publications

The quality of lake ice is of paramount importance for ice safety and lake ecology under ice. In 2020/2021, the researchers conducted a coordinated sampling campaign of lake ice quality during one of the warmest winters since 1880. They showed that lake ice during this period generally consisted of unstable white ice, which at times accounted for up to 100 percent of the total ice thickness.

The authors conducted a sampling campaign of water isotopes, combined with climatic and hydrometric data across an evergreen broad-leaved woodland, to assess event-based changes in water cycling and partitioning. Quantifying the transfer of water in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum improved the understanding of water cycling and partitioning in an urban woodland in a monsoon humid region.

Citizen scientists sampled more than 600 freshwaters in Germany. This unique data set provides evidence of 3 trends: first, microorganisms in the sediment show signs of chemical stress and antibiotic resistance in their genetic material. Second, excessive artificial lighting at night alters the species composition of  microorganisms. And third, all studied water bodies emit greenhouse gases. 

In both time and space, the observed differentiation in trait values among populations and communities can be the result of interactions between ecological and evolutionary processes. The authors extended methods to quantify ecological and evolutionary contributions to trait changes to account for empirical studies that document trait differentiation among populations structured in space.

Fatty acid markers, stable isotopes of C and N, and bacterial communities were investigated in a mesotidal estuary of the Patagonia to assess the Odum’s outwelling hypothesis. Rhodobacterales were likely early colonizers of the outwelled organic matter and the exportation of nutrients and organisms and their essential fatty acids from the wetland was inferred, supporting the findings of Odum.

The authors identified individual striped marlin (Kajikia audax) hunting in groups. Groups surrounded prey but individuals took turns attacking. They found that competition for prey access led to an unequal division of prey among the predators, with 50% of the most frequently attacking marlin capturing 70–80% of the fish.

The authors have now shown for the first time in naturally clonal fish that genetically identical individuals already differ in their character traits on the first day of life and that these early character differences significantly shape the behavior of the animals into adulthood. 

The authors investigated whether satellite-derived soil moisture products of high spatio-temporal resolution are useful for calibrating a process-based ecohydrological model. Including soil moisture data for calibration improved process-consistency of the model. At this scale, the temporal dynamics of the satellite-derived data were more helpful for model calibration than the spatial patterns.