Our major projects
Biodiversity in urban ecosystems
Functional ecology of urban arthropods. A functional ecological understanding of urban insect communities is of growing importance especially in regard to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem service maintenance and effective conservation programs. We work in the growing field of urban insect functional ecology. We conduct functional trait-based research on insects in urban ecosystems to ask which species traits relate to ecosystem services like pest control and pollination, and to evaluate trait–environment relationships.
Current projects use urban community gardens as a model system to study wild pollinators and pollination services. In many German cities, urban agriculture is increasingly popular and some cities have recently implemented pollinator conservation policy. We are asking: how does management, urbanization, and climate variability affect wild bee diversity, pollination function, and their relationships? This work involves a citizen science platform to measure pollination and to broaden participation of residents in urban ecology research.