Opening of the lecture series “Planet Earth 3.0 – Living in a Changing World” by Professor Dr. Heike Feldhaar (University of Bayreuth)
Tropical rainforests play a central role in stabilizing the climate because they store large amounts of carbon in their biomass. In addition, intact tropical rainforests are biodiversity hotspots. So far, however, we know little about how biodiversity recovers in regenerating tropical rainforests. In my presentation, I will provide insights into our research on how animal communities and their interactions with plants change along a reforestation gradient in an Ecuadorian lowland rainforest.
Heike Feldhaar earned her Ph.D. at the University of Frankfurt on the evolutionary ecology of ant-plant interactions. She then moved to the University of Würzburg, where she studied the ecology of bacterium-insect symbioses. Since 2011, Heike Feldhaar has been a professor of animal population ecology at the University of Bayreuth. Her research focuses on the impacts of multiple stressors associated with global change on invertebrates, as well as on reforestation processes and the effects of forest structure on invertebrate communities and ecosystem processes.
Moderator: Professor Dr. Gabriele Uhl
