Assessing current and future biodiversity patterns, and their underlying drivers is of crucial importance to develop relevant conservation programs, and to promote sustainable development and human well-being. While biodiversity conservation research and actions have yet mostly focus on taxonomic diversity solely, considering the diversity of organismal traits (functional) and evolutionary lineages (phylogenetic) offers promise for effective conservation and the maintenance of resilient ecosystems to global change. Indeed, taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic facets of biodiversity respond neither at the same pace or scale, nor in the same way to drivers, especially to anthropogenic perturbations. The still fragmented knowledge about multifaceted biodiversity greatly limits our ability to anticipate current and future conservation needs. The main objective of INTEGRADIV is to develop an integrative approach to provide guidelines on how taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic facets of biodiversity should be encapsulated in realistic conservation plans. INTEGRADIV rely on the assessment of ecosystem integrity (its degree of preservation) and vulnerability to global changes, notably based on an innovative quantification of trait-based and phylogenetic attributes distributions. The project benefit from both existing and newly collected occurrences, life-traits and phylogenetic data to develop an innovative framework of biodiversity assessment considering multiple spatial scales (regional and euro-Mediterranean) and taxonomic groups. Considering the diversity of trees, butterflies and birds in the Euro-Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot, the key questions INTEGRADIV address are: 1) Where are the high-value biodiversity areas? 2) What is the level of ecological integrity of the Euro-Mediterranean forests? 3) How were shaped spatial patterns of biodiversity, and how high are they vulnerable to climate and land-use changes?

The WorldClimb project addresses the impact of the increasing popularity of rock climbing, which has led to a yearly growth of 15-20% in global climbers. With 50 million climbers worldwide and a projected increase, concerns arise about the impact on cliff ecosystems, especially in Natural Protected Areas. Despite this, little is known about the effects on cliff biodiversity, with previous studies often limited in scope. WorldClimb conducted the first large-scale study, assessing climbing's impact on Mediterranean cliff vegetation across eight countries. Using a closely-adjacent design, they compared climbed and unclimbed routes in 43 locations. The goal is to understand and address threats to cliff biodiversity due to recreational activities, providing a basis for conservation strategies.

More info here: https://www.martimarchsalas.com/worldclimb 

Trophic relationships are one particular type of species interactions that play a main role in ecosystem functioning. Humans can largely impact relevant trophic relationships. This study focuses on bird predation and insect herbivory and explores how urban microclimates, influenced by impervious surfaces and green/blue infrastructure, affect these interactions. A year-long field experiment in Amsterdam will investigate the role of human population density, vegetation, and water cover on trophic cascades. By using plasticine caterpillars and leaf scans, this research aims to stablish the basis for explaining the thermal mechanism that regulate bird predation and insect herbivory in urban areas.

Trophic relationships are one particular type of species interactions that play a main role in ecosystem functioning. Humans can largely affect relevant trophic relationships. This study focuses on plant, herbivore and bird phenology and explores how urban microclimates, influenced by impervious surfaces and green/blue infrastructure, and light pollution affect temporary these interactions. A year-long field experiment in Amsterdam will investigate the role of human population density, vegetation, water surface and nocturnal light pollution on trophic cascades desynchronization by using leaf scans and plasticine caterpillars. This research aims to stablish the desynchronization magnitude of species interactions among urban environments.

Trophic relationships are one particular type of species interactions which play a main role in ecosystem functioning. This can be affected by human impact, which is currently one of the main drivers of biodiversity decline. At the same time, latitudinal gradients can also produce changes in the intensity of trophic interactions. Lastly, latitude could be affecting differently these interactions depending on the intensity of human impacts. Temperature gradients produced by latitude could be exacerbated or lessened by human climate change (e.g., island heat effect on cities). Studies conducted with specific methodologies are necessary to extract conclusions about the effect of urbanization on trophic interactions in order to understand how these effects change along the latitudinal gradients. The aim of the project is to investigate the effects of human population density -as a surrogate of human impact- on trophic interactions (bird predation) along latitudinal gradients. For this purpose, 18 study sites will be settled up and distributed in the north and south of Germany along human population density gradients. Following Low et al. (2014), artificial caterpillars will be place on tree branches in these different sites to estimate bird predation by counting the marks of attack on them. The probability of predation in every study site will give the information to establish if the human influence on ecosystem functioning is exacerbated or lessened by latitude and to estimate the future consequences for biodiversity in the current context of climate change.

Drylands cover about 40% of the global land surface (Davies & Poulsen, 2012). Within drylands, oases are keystone ecosystems. Oases s.s. are “intrazonal vegetated islands (Shen et al., 2001) surrounded by large areas of drylands or deserts (Zang et al., 2012), either with a natural or man-made origin, but generally with a human use, characterized by having a persistent water supply which makes them a fertile area (De Haas et al., 2001, Qi et al., 2007)”. Drylands, including oases, contain a unique biological and cultural diversity, are the origin of important crop species, and build pivotal genetic reservoirs (Shachak et al., 2005; Buerkert et al., 2009). Hence, oases may serve as model systems to study biocultural diversity.  

In this project, the current world distribution of oases will be delineated while transmitting to society the ecological and cultural importance of those special ecosystems. With the collaboration of ‘Global Vegetation Project’ <http://gveg.wyobiodiversity.org> and ‘iNaturalist’ <https://www.inaturalist.org/> we will create a citizen science platform in which people can provide photographs with location information (coordinates) of oases of the world. This platform will be available on a website stored in the Senckenberg Museum webpage <https://www.senckenberg.de/de/engagement/buergerwissenschaften/>.

 To increase the impact of this project we will organize a photo contest in which two categories will be available. The first one ‘Oasis landscape’ will include landscape photographs of oases, including human uses, with special attention on the name of the oases and the dominant plant species. These photographs will be shared with ‘Global Vegetation Project’ of Wyoming University (US) whose goal is “Enabling visual and interactive experiences that link vegetation and climate at the global scale”. The second category will be ‘Biodiversity in oases’. This second category will include only photographs of animals and plants with special importance about the species identification. Those photographs will be uploaded to the iNaturalist database, a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, whose goal is to “explore and share your observations from the natural world”. Via iNaturalist, the identification of every species will be corroborated. 

The output of this citizen science project will be a list of oases of the world with associated geographical coordinates, a list of species identified in every oasis, and a database of photographs of world oases to be used in the Senckenberg museum expositions (see Figure 1). The list of oases and diversity will be incorporated into the open-source database (WOase) that is being created by conducting extensive bibliographical research on oases. The results of this project, photographs and the database will be available on the web, in the Twitter account (@WOase_database ; <https://twitter.com/WOase_database>) and in the Instagram account (@WOase_database ; <https://www.instagram.com/woase_database/>).

Biomass production by trees, which is critical for services provided by forest ecosystems, is increasingly threatened by climate change, land use and insect herbivory. Combined with the accelerating loss of biodiversity, this loss of ecosystem services has accentuated the need to clarify the role of biodiversity in maintaining stability of ecological communities. We will explore geographical variation in the impacts of land use on the stability of the interactions between plants, plant-feeding insects and insect-feeding birds, test whether mechanisms underlying the stability of these functions are consistent across the globe, and identify the factors that affect ecosystem stability and the regions where natural and managed ecosystems are most vulnerable to ongoing environmental changes. The results will be used to develop management strategies for conservation of biodiversity and for mitigation of the impacts of biodiversity loss on the provision of ecosystem services.