Welcome to BES2025! 💫
Today, we are so excited to welcome ecologists from 58 countries, encouraging innovative research and practice in ecology.
We have exciting talks and sessions ahead in the next days from agriculture, human's place in nature, AI to green finance and much more.
So happy to be back at the BES this year for #BES2025! I had a lot of nice discussions today already, and I'll be looking forward to the poster session this evening! Feel free to pass by poster nr: A-4.95 if you want to discuss species coexistence and higher-order interactions! 🌱🌿🌱
The @bugnet.bsky.social Delegation from @slfdavos.bsky.social very much enjoyed the first day of #BES2025 in Edinburgh! Don’t miss our posters on herbivore interactions under current and future climate that we will present in the community ecology poster sessions today and tomorrow.
...and @bota-jb.bsky.social took care that everything worked smoothly, and did amazing drone images of our experiments! Thank you all, you are the best! 🥰
Today we definitely ended the field season of our @bugnet.bsky.social experimental sites in @slfdavos.bsky.social. What a year - with such a great team of students this was one of my best field seasons ever! Thanks @bota-jb.bsky.social, Carole, Ida, Carla, Sevi, Flo and Irene for the great summer!
Our first paper from the Bug-Network (BugNet) is out! 🎉
BugNet is a global network studying how invertebrate herbivores and fungal pathogens shape plant diversity & ecosystem functioning worldwide. The paper reports on the methods of the experimental part:
📄 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Jahrelange Vorbereitungen zur Pflanzung von 92'000 Bäumen: Warum dies gemacht wurde kannst du morgen Samstag, 13.9.2025 am Tag der offenen Forschungsfläche Stillberg in Davos erleben. Im Video: Aufnahmen von #SLF und #WSL aus den Jahren zwischen 1968 bis 1987.
Infos: www.slf.ch/de/veranstal...
50 years of treeline- and ecological research at our @slfdavos.bsky.social research site at Stillberg in Davos. Great fun to present some findings together with @annekempel.bsky.social to a super interested audience and some junior scientists.
Danke für diesen treffenden Blogpost und das Teilen deiner Erfahrungen, @amreibahr.bsky.social.
Despite these limitations, our study supports the idea that microbes support prey-break down in Nepenthes like in other pitcher plant genera, e. g. Cephalotus or Sarracenia and we hope to provide a starting point for investigating this further. 7/7
⚠ Limitations of our study include:
- no information on direct effects of the UV treatment on the microbial community
- short experimental period insufficient to detect potential effects on plant-growth
- No assessment of macro-inquiline influence on nutrient dynamics. 6/7
❕Our key finding: plants with non-sterilised fluids showed a quicker and improved photosynthetic response to prey capture than those with sterilised fluids. This suggests that microbes contribute to the breakdown of prey which could be crucial under high competition for nutrients with inquilines 5/7
Sketch illustrating the methodology of the study.
To investigate the role of the microbes in the plant’s prey digestion, we excluded macro-inquilines, provided prey to the pitchers, and sterilised the digestive fluid daily using UV light over a two-month period. We then compared the physiological responses of plants with and without microbes. 4/7
Info graphic depicting microbes and enzymes present in the digestive fluid
Despite the fluid’s acidity and enzymatic activity, a range of organisms – including arthropods, rotifers, and microbes – live inside the pitchers. These so-called inquilines may compete with the plant, aid digestion, N-enrich the fluid, or have no effect at all. 3/7
Photos of the habitats of Nepenthes hemsleyana
N. hemsleyana pitchers
Nepenthes hemsleyana grows in nutrient-poor soils and acquires nutrients by capturing arthropods and collecting faeces from bats that roost inside its pitchers. It then secretes digestive enzymes into the fluid to break down prey and access nutrients. 2/7
Do microbes contribute to prey digestion in Nepenthes pitcher plants? We investigated this through a field experiment on Borneo by sterilising the digestive fluid of N. hemsleyana. We found that plants with microbes benefit quicker from captured prey. A thread👇 🌱🧪 🌏 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Our paper on unifying theory around biodiversity–consumer relationships (pathogens & herbivores) is now out in TREE!
I hope it helps those navigating the forest of theories & hypotheses in this space to see more clearly 🤓
Check out @fletcher-h.bsky.social great summary of the paper here 👇
Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science!
#WomenInScience #WomenInStem #FrauenInderWissenschaft #FrauenInMINT #MintFrauen #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience
Save the date: 50 Jahre Forschungsfläche #Stillberg, Davos
13. September 2025
1975 pflanzten #WSL und #SLF am Stillberg 92'000 Bäume, um den #Schutzwald zu erforschen. Zum Jubiläum öffnen wir unsere Forschungsfläche für alle!
Infos: www.slf.ch/stillberg50
📷️ E. Dimitrov / W. Schönenberger / C. Rixen
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Billionaires & venture capital shouldn’t control our digital lives.
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Chip in today to make it happen freeourfeeds.com
How do herbivores and fungal pathogens shape plant communities in a changing climate? Learn how we’re investing this experimentally on our @bugnet.bsky.social field sites in Davos. 🌱 🌐 youtu.be/3zJhOJqYkcg?... @slfdavos.bsky.social
Are you working on the impact of herbivores & pathogens on plant communities and would be interested to join a global research network? Learn more about the Bug-Network and our easy to maintain exclusion experiment at our upcoming info-meeting 👇 #ecology 🌐🌱🐌🦗
Zoom screen with the participants of the BugNet meeting
What's the impact of herbivores and pathogens on plant communities? That's what we investigate in our global Bug-network with many collaborators from across the world! Today we had our global meeting - what a great BugNet-spirit! Thank you all for joining!
🙋♂️
Vielen Dank @ronensteinke.bsky.social, der Kommentar bringt es auf den Punkt!
Drawing of a Nepenthes hemsleyana pitcher
That was fun! Creating a summary figure for a paper on pitcher plants escalated slightly when I couldn’t find what I needed and decided to draw it myself…
Dear Martin, thanks for your efforts! Could you please add me as well?
Exactly!
