An international team including Peter van Bodegom shows how trait variability can be incorporated in Essential Biodiversity Variables to allow monitoring how organisms respond to global change. They published their results in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Which traits did change due to the invasion process of plants and how do these traits contribute to the invasiveness of such species. What is the role of carbohydrate accumulation? What is the function of carbohydrate accumulation in plants? Is genetic variation depleted in invasive species under se…

Wetland plants are distinguished from plants of other terrestrial ecosystems by their adaptations to specific habitat stresses, including waterlogged and flooding and the subsequent abundance of phytotoxic compounds.

Promotores: W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg, G.R. de Snoo, Co-promotor: M.G. Vijver

What are trait-trait relationships in wetlands? To what extent the so-called leaf economics traits deviate from terrestrial ecosystems? How traits specific to wetland plant relate to plant strategies? What’s the relationship between wetland plant traits to the ecosystem functioning (e.g. productivity,…

How can species literacy in the Netherlands be explained and improved?

My PhD thesis investigates the ecological significance of resistance against drought-induced air bubble formation inside the water conduits of plants (embolism), and the plasticity and functional aspects of stem anatomical traits in woody and herbaceous species.

Do understudied animals contain hidden species?

This thesis describes the genetic and prokaryotic diversity of giant barrel sponges.

As a non-invasive genetic method, eDNA based approaches have become an important component of ecologists' and environmental managers' toolkits for biomonitoring in conservation and an increasingly important source of ecological knowledge.

Just like every other organism on Earth, plants’ ultimate goal is to survive and reproduce. In order to achieve this, they must make trade-offs between where and how to allocate their finite set of resources. Whether they put their resources and energy into their growth, reproduction or maintenance,…

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotor: B.W. Hoeksema

Which genes are involved in woodiness and associated traits such as drought tolerance, flowering time, stem elongation, life span, and plant herbivory, and how do these gene regulatory pathways overlap?

Vocal learning is a trait shared by songbirds and humans. It is also a trait that is restricted by the brain rather than by a species' vocal apparatus. In this dissertation, functional MRI is employed in both species in order to explore potential common neural mechanisms underlying the ability to develop…

What are the behaviours of plant traits throughout various points in the growing season in a radiative transfer model framework and how well can this knowledge be integrated through data assimilation to provide priors for robust local and global vegetation products and analysis?

What impact does a mid-season wildfire have on grassland invertebrates?

Does a mid-season fire impact invertebrate populations?

In the last couple of decades an ‘animal turn’ has taken place in the social sciences. This has led to a call to study social issues by including non-human animal perspectives. This Collaborative Research Group thinks it's high time that African Studies joins the chorus of minds that try to contribute…

Promotor: Prof.dr. E. Smets, Dr. M. Stech

Promotor: P.J.J. Hooykaas, Co-Promotor: E.J. van der Zaal

Development of Natural Resource for New Medicines

In his dissertation Michiel Hooykaas outlines the results of six empirical research projects focused at biodiversity awareness in the Netherlands, specifically people’s knowledge about animals.

Describe and identify what dosimetry parameters are of importance to interpret dose-response relationships (eg., mortality, sub-lethal, growth or reproduction inhabitation, DNA damage and reactive oxygen species, etc. ) for metal-based nanoparticles? How to develop quantitative models that enable to…

Promotor: Prof.dr. P.G.L Klinkhamer

Promotores: J.A.van Veen, P.L.G.Klinkhamer. Co-promotor: E.E.Kuramae

Can trees adapt to (climate) change? Which trees are more or less capable of doing so, and why? A group of researchers from all over the world set to work on these questions. Professor of Environmental Biology Peter van Bodegom helped to classify the functional traits of tree species. These are for…

What is the effect of light at night on plant phenology and physiology, and how does this affect plant interactions with other species?

Himalayan environments have changed and continue to change as a result of how people interpret, source, and use them. Scholarly investigation of the induced transformations, whether in deforestation, dam construction, or glacial melt, highlights how man is shaping the world in the Anthropocene.

Within the same species of butterfly many different wing patterns can occur. How is this possible? According to researchers Ben Wielstra and Emma Berdan, of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), the answer lies within supergenes. A supergene is a part of a chromosome that contains many strongly linked…

The disappearance and reappearance of species of plants in the Netherlands is a normal phenomenon. In the period from 1981-2000 the number of plants to have disappeared was considerably lower than previously, whereas the number of species rediscovered is much higher. Climate change may be the cause.

Does the presence of Ring-necked parakeets negatively influence feeding and feeding behaviour of native bird species on artificial bird feeders and if so, what are possible solutions?

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

In this thesis, I study 1) metabolic alterations in tuberculosis related to wasting syndrome in human patients as well as in rodent and fish animal models. 2) effects of the mutation of the leptin gene on cachexia and diabetes in rodent and zebrafish animal models.

Promotor: P.G.L. Klinkhamer, Co-Promotores: K. Vrieling, P.P.J. Mulder

Questionnaires or concentration tasks can be used to screen for anxiety, but so too can EEG recordings – at least indirectly. The frequent mind wandering of anxious people can also be seen on MRI scans. These are just some of the findings of clinical neuropsychologist Dana van Son. PhD defence on 24…

Nitrogen deposition does not only affect plant biodiversity, but also strongly affects the composition of the remainder of the food web, through the changes in plant composition. In an unprecedented analysis of population changes of butterfly and moth species, an international research team including…

Plant-microbe interaction resulted in different physio/chemical responses by host plant and interacting rhizobacteria.

Paleobotanist Menno Booi discovered that 250 previously described fossil tree species are objectively not distinguishable; they belong to only one single species.

How soil microbial composition impacts structure and composition of the aboveground plant and animal communities?

How presence, abundance and enzymatic activities of AM and EM fungi differently affect soil carbon sequestration processes?

Mycorrhizas are symbiotic associations between soil fungi and most plant species.

This research programme aims to increase the scientific understanding of how current and emerging anthropogenic threats affect biodiversity and ecosystem services to facilitate strategic management of natural resources. To this end, we address urgent challenges in relation to the mechanisms involved…

How does invasive hybridization affect threatened native species?

What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves, Menno Schilthuizen reports from the front lines of evolutionary biology, on a quest to make sense of the origins, workings and evolution of our and other species’ reproductive selves.

For the first time research has been done on species literacy in the Netherlands. Children in primary schools know about 1 in 3 native animal species. Publication in Biological Conservation.

‘In a hole under water there lived a hobbit’: a new species of shrimp named after Bilbo Baggings. Biology student Werner de Gier described this newly discovered species during his bachelor internship at Naturalis Biodiversity Center.

When biology student Mike Groenhof was making a phylogenetic tree of fifty shrimp species for his internship, one specimen turned out to be an undescribed species. The animal was collected by Naturalis scientist 18 years ago, and had been under the radar ever since.

Researchers from Biomon have used DNA-techniques to find 40 different species of fish in the river Dommel. This technique is capable of detecting more species than conventional methods of measuring.