A red mason bee (Osmia bicornis) in its winter quarters, a reed stalk. It has just hatched and is preparing to leave the nest. (Image: Cristina Ganuza / University of Würzburg)

A large-scale experiment shows that warmth brings #bees and #wasps out of #hibernation earlier – leaving some of them with poorer starting conditions. New paper @ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social @funecology.bsky.social #climatechange
➡️ www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-...

Eine Ackerhummel vom Typ "Bombus pascuorum" sitzt auf einer Blüte. An ihren Hinterbeinen ist ein dickes Pollenpäckchen zu sehen.

Zu trocken = zu wenig Nachwuchs 🐝 Eine Studie der Uni Würzburg zeigt: Bei Dürre entstehen kaum neue Hummelköniginnen. Ohne sie gibt es keine nächste Generation. Klimawandel trifft auch kleine Tiere. 👉 go.uniwue.de/hummel #Hummel #Klimawandel #Artenvielfalt 📷 Hanno Korten

Thank you 💚

Interview with National Geographic on climate change effects on tropical insects
www.nationalgeographic.com.es/mundo-animal...

Wrote a news article about our recent study on thermal limits🌡️

Insects in the #Amazon could reach their heat thresholds. Rising temperatures already threaten dung beetles. A study conducted by scientists from #Würzburg and #Bremen shows this trend. @ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social @kimholzmann.bsky.social
➡️ www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-...
📸 Kim Lea Holzmann

Dung beetles, providing important ecosystem functions, might be already showing decreasing diversity (biotic attrition) due to high temperatures. Microhabitats and forest connectivity along the Amazonian-Andean gradient are crucial to maintain and conserve biodiversity.

While temperature and soil moisture (but not resources) explained overall diversity patterns along the gradient, this failed to explain the drop in the lowlands. Including critical temperatures improved the model, indicating that lowlands might be already too hot for heat-sensitive species 🔥

For a mechanistic understanding we also tested thermal limits of dung beetles. As we showed for all insects in a previous article in Nature
(doi.org/10.1038/s415...), also dung beetles in the lowlands have the smallest thermal safety margin.

We sampled dung beetles using baited pitfall traps along a forested gradient from 250-3500 masl, and found the highest diversity at 500 masl with a remarkable drop in the lowlands.

Our paper on the drivers of dung beetle diversity along a tropical elevational gradient is now out in #ProcB @royalsocietypublishing.org
🪲🪲🪲
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

@royalsociety.org
@ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social

Higher carbon storage in primary than secondary boreal forests in Sweden 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...

5 years ago I joined a field work campaign in the stunningly beautiful Swedish primary forests, still one of my all-time favourite fieldwork experiences!🌲🌿

Now there is a new study out lead by Didac Pascual and Anders Ahlström from Lund University
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thank you for letting me know!
www.nature.com/nature/volum...

The photo shows the cover of the nature journal, displaying a colorful moth sitting on moss. The caption says: Heat Sensitive. Tropical insects show limited ability to cope with a warming world.

Really happy that a moth made it to the cover of @nature.com! Thanks to my co-author Gunnar Brehm for this great photo 📸

Find our study on thermal limits in this week's issue:
www.nature.com/nature/volum...

@ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social
@biologie-uniwue.bsky.social
@uni-wuerzburg.de

How are Pacific NW mountain birds responding to climate change?

I got up at 4:00 am for a month to find out.

but first the backstory, or "how I spent seven years telling everyone this project wasn't possible"

new paper here:
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Contact me for thesis opportunities 🦇 @ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social @biologie-uniwue.bsky.social

In December 2025, my research grant got accepted - meaning, we can now explore a hidden, dark and fascinating world... To find out more about the evolution of thermal tolerances in insects. #CAVIN

‪
🌳 Do you want to contribute to research on how humans perceive forests? Take this quick, anonymous 10-min survey 🌲

👉 www.biodiful.org#/forest

This will help us explore how people experience forest biodiversity!

Please share on 🦋 & tag @biodiful.bsky.social to reach more participants 🙏💚

🌐🌍🦤🦑🪴🍁🧪

Thanks for checking, but one of the leading senior co-authors is from Kenya and affiliated to Embu University.

Most Insect Species Call the Tropics Home. But Climate Change Is Pushing Many of the Critters There to Their Heat Limits Insects in the lowlands will have an especially hard time with rising temperatures, a new study suggests

Another highly relevant article putting tropical insects into the spotlight
@smithsonianmag.bsky.social
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/m...

Ready to start your own lab? Interested in #GlobalChange,#Biodiversity and #Ecosystem#Resilience? Join us in Göttingen - we are looking for a (female) Junior Research Group Leader in #EcologicalNovelty.
Attractive conditions, see euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/415857 - please share widely if you can!

Thanks for sharing! This seems to fit well to our results, indeed!

Many heat-stressed tropical insects are reaching their limits Vast study in Peru and Kenya confirms limited defenses against rising temperatures, redoubling climate concerns

Another great article featuring our research published in @nature.com

Many heat-stressed tropical insects are reaching their limits | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
@science.org

Rising temperatures pose a threat to tropical insects An assessment of sensitivity to increasing temperature for thousands of insect species in mountainous terrain reveals a risk of insect biodiversity loss in tropical lowlands.

There is also an amazing news article in @nature.com on our recent paper in the same journal.

Rising temperatures pose a threat to tropical insects www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Thank you!

While orthopterans 🦗 showed the highest heat tolerance, flies 🪰 appeared as the most sensitive group. Intact forests with high complexity, shade and connectivity are of high importance to prevent (further) species losses in the Earth's most biodiverse area.

Importantly, we compared heat tolerance with surface and air temperatures predicted under three climate change scenarios. Most vulnerable are insects in the Amazonian rainforest, where over 50% of future air temperatures could induce a heat coma in half of the insect community.

In addition, we used a deep learning model to predict the melting temperature of 1000 proteins in over 600 species. We found a high correlation of physiological thermal limits and protein stability, indicating that heat tolerance might be founded in fundamental protein architecture.

We sampled ~8000 insects along two large elevational gradients and tested their thermal tolerance. Upper thermal limits declined with elevation and more closely related taxa had similar limits. Lowland insects did not show plasticity to adapt to higher temperatures.

Big effort, exciting results - our paper on the constraints of thermal limits in tropical insects is now out in @nature.com! 🦋🐝🪰🪲🦗
@ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social
@biologie-uniwue.bsky.social
@uni-wuerzburg.de