Welcome ...
...to the Plant Ecology group website, led by Prof. Dr. Katja Tielbörger! Here you can find information to our main research topics, our teaching, our staff, job announcements and news. Ms Tielbörger is also head of the Botanical Garden.
If you want to get us to know us better, join one of our regular group seminars which we host together with the Plant Evolutionary Ecology group! We are presenting our work in these seminars and provide you with an insight into the highly active and diverse range of research topics of the plant ecology department.
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New publications
21.01.2022 ► Nölke, I., Tonn, B., Komainda, M., Heshmati, S., & Isselstein, J. (2022). The choice of the white clover population alters overyielding of mixtures with perennial ryegrass and chicory and underlying processes. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1155. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-05100-6
11.01.2022 ► Gibson-Forty, E. V. J., Tielbörger, K., & Seifan, M. (2022). Equivocal evidence for a change in balance between selfing and pollinator-mediated reproduction in annual Brassicaceae growing along a rainfall gradient. Journal of Systematics and Evolution, 60(1), 196-207. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.12637
29.12.2021 ► Lembrechts, J. J., van den Hoogen, J., Aalto, J., ..., Canessa, R., ..., Herberich, M., ..., Tielbörger, K., ..., van den Brink, L., ..., Zyryanov, V. I., Nijs, I., & Lenoir, J. Global maps of soil temperature. Global Change Biology, n/a(n/a). https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16060
29.09.2021 ► Mohiley, A., Laaser, T., Höreth, S., Clemens, S., Tielbörger, K., & Gruntman, M. (2021). Between the devil and the deep blue sea: herbivory induces foraging for and uptake of cadmium in a metal hyperaccumulating plant. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 228(1959). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1682
26.08.2021 ► Sharma, H., Ehlers, T. A., Glotzbach, C., Schmid, M., & Tielbörger, K. (2021). Effect of rock uplift and Milankovitch timescale variations in precipitation and vegetation cover on catchment erosion rates. Earth Surf. Dynam., 9(4), 1045-1072. https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-1045-2021
PhD Defence: Ronja Ratzbor
12.11.2021
Ronja Ratzbor has successfully defended her PhD project on the effect of habitat heterogeneity on species diversity in semi-natural grassland ecosystems. Congratulations, Ronj
New Global Centre for climate and environment in the Jordan River region
15.04.2021
New Global Climate Centre coordinated at the Tielbörger Group! Our group convinced the DAAD to fund a regional climate and resource management center in Jordan and neighbouring countries. The SAGE-Center (Sustainable Adaptation to Global Change in the Middle East) will be devoted to transboundary sustainability research and capacity building in the Jordan River region and will be running for almost five years, with an option for another extension by five years. This centre builds on decades of transdisciplinary and transboundary research in the focal region and on many years of confidence-building among scientists and stakeholders.
The EU's Common Agriculture Policy and Sustainable Farming: A statement by scientists
08.12.2020
Katja has co-authored an urgency statement by scientists to the EU commission in response to the draft of the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which contradicts all serious efforts for a more sustainable agriculture. The statement has been published here: https://zenodo.org/record/4311314 Please share!
A Dry Run: Drought Impact on Plant Ecosystems
09.11.2020
In the new issue of attempto! Katja Tielbörger and Maximiliane Herberich describe by means of rainout shelter experiments on the Swabian Alb how future drought periods will affect plant ecosystems. Special edition climate change, attempto! 53|2020
New publication in Ecology Letters!
27.08.2020
Katja just published a new study showing that plants may rapidly adapt to climate change, albeit not in all relevant traits. So the message is not entirely optimistic. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13596
Congratulations!
21.05.2020
Ruichang's and Katja's new study now published in Nature Communications! They present a model and an experiment which manage to combine competition and facilitation theory in a common framework. Read here, when and why the stress gradient hypothesis applies and why a dense neighbourhood is not always negative for plant performance: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16286-6
Planet Wissen
18.02.2020
Katja Tielbörger is talking on Planet Wissen about the fascinating research on smart plants: plants warn each other of enemies, ally themselves with helpful bacteria and fungi, use insects and other animals for reproduction and use chemical weapons for defence. Plants can make decisions and it seems that they can even learn.