Wissenschaftliche Werke

Ringelberg, J. J., N. E. Zimmermann, A. Weeks, M. Lavin, and C. E. Hughes. 2020. Biomes as evolutionary arenas: Convergence and conservatism in the trans‐continental succulent biome A. Moles [ed.],. Global Ecology and Biogeography 29: 1100–1113. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13089

Aim: Historically, biomes have been defined based on their structurally and functionally similar vegetation, but there is debate about whether these similarities are superficial, and about how biomes are defined and mapped. We propose that combined assessment of evolutionary convergence of plant fun…

Karger, D. N., M. Kessler, O. Conrad, P. Weigelt, H. Kreft, C. König, and N. E. Zimmermann. 2019. Why tree lines are lower on islands—Climatic and biogeographic effects hold the answer J. Grytnes [ed.],. Global Ecology and Biogeography 28: 839–850. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12897

Aim: To determine the global position of tree line isotherms, compare it with observed local tree limits on islands and mainlands, and disentangle the potential drivers of a difference between tree line and local tree limit. Location: Global. Time period: 1979–2013. Major taxa studied: Trees. Method…

Sheppard, C. S., and F. M. Schurr. 2018. Biotic resistance or introduction bias? Immigrant plant performance decreases with residence times over millennia. Global Ecology and Biogeography. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12844

Aim: Invasions are dynamic processes. Invasive spread causes the geographical range size of alien species to increase with residence time. However, with time native competitors and antagonists can adapt to invaders. This build‐up of biotic resistance may eventually limit the invader’s performance an…

Peterson, A. T., A. Asase, D. Canhos, S. de Souza, and J. Wieczorek. 2018. Data Leakage and Loss in Biodiversity Informatics. Biodiversity Data Journal 6. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.6.e26826

The field of biodiversity informatics is in a massive, “grow-out” phase of creating and enabling large-scale biodiversity data resources. Because perhaps 90% of existing biodiversity data nonetheless remains unavailable for science and policy applications, the question arises as to how these existin…

Wan, J.-Z., C.-J. Wang, and F.-H. Yu. 2019. Large-scale environmental niche variation between clonal and non-clonal plant species: Roles of clonal growth organs and ecoregions. Science of The Total Environment 652: 1071–1076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.280

Clonal plant species can produce genetically identical and potentially independent offspring, and dominate a variety of habitats. The divergent evolutionary mechanisms between clonal and non-clonal plants are interesting areas of ecological research. A number of studies have shown that the environme…

Guedes, T. B., R. J. Sawaya, A. Zizka, S. Laffan, S. Faurby, R. A. Pyron, R. S. Bérnils, et al. 2017. Patterns, biases and prospects in the distribution and diversity of Neotropical snakes. Global Ecology and Biogeography 27: 14–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12679

Motivation: We generated a novel database of Neotropical snakes (one of the world’s richest herpetofauna) combining the most comprehensive, manually compiled distribution dataset with publicly available data. We assess, for the first time, the diversity patterns for all Neotropical snakes as well as…

Forti, L. R., C. G. Becker, L. Tacioli, V. R. Pereira, A. C. F. A. Santos, I. Oliveira, C. F. B. Haddad, and L. F. Toledo. 2017. Perspectives on invasive amphibians in Brazil S. Lötters [ed.],. PLOS ONE 12: e0184703. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184703

Introduced species have the potential to become invasive and jeopardize entire ecosystems. The success of species establishing viable populations outside their original extent depends primarily on favorable climatic conditions in the invasive ranges. Species distribution modeling (SDM) can thus be u…