Invasion windows for a global legume invader are revealed after joint examination of abiotic and biotic filters.

Successful alien plant invasion is influenced by both climate change and plant-plant interactions. We estimate the single and interactive effects of competition and extreme weather events on the performance of the global legume invader Lupinus polyphyllus (Lindl.).

Flower strip networks offer promising long term effects on pollinator species richness in intensively cultivated agricultural areas.

Background: Intensively cultivated agricultural landscapes often suffer from substantial pollinator losses, which may be leading to decreasing pollination services for crops and wild flowering plants. Conservation measures that are easy to implement and accepted by farmers are needed to halt a further loss of pollinators in large areas under intensive agricultural management. Here we report the results of a replicated long-term study involving networks of mostly perennial flower strips covering 10% of a conventionally managed agricultural landscape in southwestern Germany.

Invasion of a Legume Ecosystem Engineer in a Cold Biome Alters Plant Biodiversity.

Plant ecosystem engineers are widely used to combat land degradation. However, the ability of those plants to modulate limiting abiotic and biotic resources of other species can cause damage to ecosystems in which they become invasive. Here, we use as example to estimate and project the hazardous potential of nitrogen fixing herbaceous plants in a sub-polar oceanic climate.

Disentangling the role of management, vegetation structure, and plant quality for Orthoptera in lowland meadows.

Seminatural grasslands provide habitats for various species and are important for biodiversity conservation. The understanding of the diverse responses of species and traits to different grassland management methods is therefore urgently needed. We disentangled the role of grassland management (fertilization and irrigation), vegetation structure (biomass, sward height) and plant quality (protein and fiber content) for Orthoptera communities in lowland hay meadows in Germany.

On the influence of provenance to soil quality enhanced stress reaction of young beech trees to summer drought.

Climate projections propose that drought stress will become challenging for establishing trees. The magnitude of stress is dependent on tree species, provenance, and most likely also highly influenced by soil quality. European Beech () is of major ecological and economical importance in Central European forests.

Homogenizing and diversifying effects of intensive agricultural land-use on plant species beta diversity in Central Europe - A call to adapt our conservation measures.

The prevention of biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes to protect ecosystem stability and functions is of major importance to stabilize overall diversity. Intense agriculture leads to a loss in species richness and homogenization of species pools, but the processes behind are poorly understood due to a lack of systematic case studies: The specific impacts by agriculture in contrast to other land-use creating open habitat are not studied as such landscapes hardly exist in temperate regions. Applying systematic grids, we compared the plant species distribution at the landscape scale between an active military training areas in Europe and an adjacent rather intensively used agricultural landscape.

Local adaptations to frost in marginal and central populations of the dominant forest tree Fagus sylvatica L. as affected by temperature and extreme drought in common garden experiments.

Local adaptations to environmental conditions are of high ecological importance as they determine distribution ranges and likely affect species responses to climate change. Increased environmental stress (warming, extreme drought) due to climate change in combination with decreased genetic mixing due to isolation may lead to stronger local adaptations of geographically marginal than central populations. We experimentally observed local adaptations of three marginal and four central populations of Fagus sylvaticaL.