Twice a year the Botany and Zoology departments organise an Eco Fair where biology students at the bachelor or masters level can meet with different workgroups, find a thesis topic or explore practical work opportunities. Our workgroup has also always joined the event and this time the macroecology workgroup was represented by Eleonora, Daria and Riin.
This autumn we are also happy to welcome Gerard Martínez Devesa, a visiting PhD student from the CIBIO Research Institute at the University of Alicante (Spain). His research focuses on the taxonomic and functional diversity of arthropods (spiders and beetles) in deadwood microhabitats in Mediterranean forests. He's visiting our workgroup for three months, working with Meelis to explore which microenvironmental factors and functional traits influence the dark diversity of beetle and spider communities in different deadwood microhabitats of Quercus suber forests.
We are happy to host visiting PhD student Wengang Zhang from China! Wengang is a PhD student at the School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University. His research focuses on biological invasions, particularly exploring how dark diversity can enhance our understanding of some classic invasion hypotheses. He is currently visiting our workgroup for one year to collaborate with Meelis on projects using DarkDivNet plant survey data to explore the relationships between native and alien diversity through the lens of dark diversity. Previously, he has worked with Meelis on studies examining the establishment of freshwater fish species.
We are happy to welcome Elisa Jordan from University of Münster in Germany! Elisa studies Landscape Ecology and her main interests are the impact of climate change on plant communities and biodiversity as well as nature restoration strategies. During her internship she is also collaborating with other workgroups in the department to learn about practical lab methods for analysing plant-soil and environment interactions to understand the mechanisms behind ecosystem responses to environmental change.
Last year many of our workgroup members did field work in different parts of Estonia to collect data on European plant species above- and belowground traits. This summer they continued the work with a focus on specific habitat types and regions to search for species that are still missing from our datasets and global trait databases. In the end of June and beginning of July our workgroup members made two field trips: Ene, Eleonora, Jing, Mohsen and John visited forests and bogs in Southern Estonia, while Riin, Juni and Blanca visited beaches and semi-natural grasslands in Western Estonia. Together they collected leaf, stem and root samples for over 40 species.
On 8-10 July, the New Phytologist Symposium "Microbes as Hidden or Prominent Players in Plant Life" took place at the University of Tartu. It was organised by Maarja Öpik and the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences. From our workgroup Meelis and Oscar participated in the event. Meelis gave a talk about how dark diversity can reveal human impacts on ecosystems and shared insights from a study exploring the relationship between microbial biodiversity and human health. Oscar presented the results of a study exploring the relationship between historical land use and the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in an urban environment.
Photo: New Phytologist Foundation
On 15-19 June, the Ecology of Soil Microorganisms conference was held in Helsinki, Finland. Several researchers from the University of Tartu participated, and Mats represented our workgroup. He presented a poster with preliminary results from his dark diversity work with global datasets of soil fungi.
Meelis Pärtel is one of the three Estonian scientists who was recently elected to Academia Europaea! Meelis will participate in the academy’s Ecology and Evolution section, where he hopes to strengthen connections between ecology and other research fields. Academia Europaea is an European non-governmental organisation that brings together top researchers from various fields. The academy provides research-organisational advice to governments and international institutions, fosters interdisciplinary relationships, maps out significant scientific issues for Europe, and proposes ways to investigate them, among other things.
On June 5th the University of Tartu botany department had a day full of Bachelor's thesis defenses. From our research group three students successfully defended their bachelor’s theses - Mari Tiits (supervised by Meelis), Marta Miia Pärnpuu (supervised by Meelis), and Annaliisa Väljaots (supervised by Riin). Their research focused on the dark diversity of insects, the application of artificial intelligence in plant co-existence identification, and the impact of human dietary choices on biodiversity. Mari (third from left on the photo), Marta Miia, and Annaliisa (second from right on the photo) demonstrated a strong research interest and excellent ability to successfully complete complex projects. We wish them a lot of success in their future scientific endeavors!
This spring semester Oscar spent three months visiting the Kohouti Lab in the Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences to collaborate with Petr Kohout who received his PhD degree in 2018 from the University of Tartu. Oscar worked with Petr on data analysis, participated in seminars and learned about the different funcal ecology and biogeography projects in the lab.
