Conservation efforts to let more sunlight into managed forests have proven remarkably effective at boosting biodiversity, but a new study reveals that at least one group of creatures pays a steep pric...

Climate change is a threat to many species. Here the authors show that species’ range dynamics determine the ability of correlative and process-based models to predict extinction risk under climate ch...

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The authors analyse global-scale resurvey data for 5,151 species to reveal the sensitivity of tropical versus temperate species to climate change. They show significantly higher frequencies of local e...

Wild et al. show in a large-scale experiment that increasing forest structural complexity enhances bat and bird diversity by separating within- and between-patch contributions to landscape diversity, ...

The microclimatic conditions within forests have great importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Consequently, understanding how management and associated changes in forest structure driv...

Context Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) create invisible chemical landscapes that influence ecosystem processes. Yet whether VOC β-diversity (i.e., variability in VOC composition between patches) responds to structural heterogeneity and reflects silvicultural habitat management remains unclear. Objectives In a large field experiment, we quantified how enhanced structural beta complexity (ESBC) affects VOC β-diversity patterns and investigated potential drivers and ecological effects in temperate production forests. Methods We sampled VOCs in ambient forest air using Tenax/Carboxen adsorbent traps at forest floor and 1 m heights across 234 treatment and control forest patches in six German regions. We analyzed VOCs via thermal desorption-gas chromatography mass-spectrometry (TD-GCMS) and examined environmental drivers including deadwood characteristics, canopy cover, tree species dissimilarity, and herb layer dissimilarity. We tested potential ecological relevance by analyzing saproxylic beetle community responses. Results VOC β-diversity increased significantly at 1 m height in heterogeneous forests compared to homogeneous forests, but we found no significant change at the forest floor. Deadwood volume and deadwood structural diversity, rather than canopy openness, were identified as the main drivers of increasing VOC β-diversity. Dissimilarity in beetle community composition was associated with VOC β-diversity, but only for forest floor VOCs, suggesting these chemical patterns may correlate with variables beetles respond to. Conclusions Our findings suggest that volatile β-diversity represents an overlooked dimension of habitat heterogeneity, one that creates invisible chemical heterogeneity influencing inter- and intra-species interactions and ecosystem processes. We demonstrate that enhancing forest heterogeneity through deadwood retention increases both structural heterogeneity and volatile β-diversity.

Metacommunity theory has expanded our understanding of how spatial dynamics and local interactions influence species communities, but we lack empirical studies specifically in terrestrial habitats te...

Boreal forests provide considerable global land carbon storage and uptake, but they are being rapidly transformed to managed secondary forests, with poorly quantified implications for ecosystem carbon...

A survey of tropical insect populations and thermal tolerance limits indicates that species from lowland areas have low capacity to survive increased temperatures, and that thermal tolerance is limited by fundamental properties of protein architecture.

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Our results provide the first experimental evidence that enhancing structural heterogeneity at the landscape scale can restore multidimensional hoverfly diversity in temperate forests. They underscor...

Insects are declining in many regions. Here the authors show that arthropod biomass losses in Jena Experiment and Biodiversity Exploratories time series are driven more by species loss than by species...

Based on the concept of the extended phenotype, bird nest characteristics can serve as indicators for adaptations to changing environmental conditions. We examined how the nest mass of three cavity-n...

npj Biological Timing and Sleep - In this career perspective article, the author describes her long pathway to a professorship in Germany.

Universität Würzburg Sanderring 2 97070 Würzburg

Prof. Dr. Heike Feldhaar hat die Bayerische Staatsmedaille für herausragende Verdienste um die Umwelt erhalten.