Tag Archives: insects

Residues of helicopter applied pesticides in and around vineyards at the river Mosel

Members of the Ecotoxicology and Community Ecology team sample soil and vegetation from the slopes of the river Mosel

In this blog post, Lorenz Witt and Ken Mauser provide some background on an excursion to the Mosel Valley. Their objective was to investigate the exposure of terrestrial non-target ecosystems to pesticides, potentially threatening the remaining habitat of a critically endangered butterfly species.

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Does global warming lead to taxonomical and functional reorganization of insect communities in European rivers?

In this blogpost, Dr. Alessandro Manfrin, postdoc of the DFG RTG SystemLink,  talks about his recent study published “Taxonomic and functional reorganization in Central European stream macroinvertebrate communities over 25 years”. Here they observed that because of increasing temperatures, species that favour cold waters are progressively replaced by those that favour warm temperatures leading to functional alterations of the community.

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Glimpse of 2022 (Part 1)

In the first part of the ‘Glimpse of the year 2022’ series, we give our readers a glance of 3 most visited posts about scientific publications in this year. 

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Insect decline? A critical discussion from a freshwater perspective – Talk on Feb 3, 2021, at 6 PM MET

Prof. Dr. Ralf B. Schäfer of Uni Koblenz-Landau will give a talk on the current research and debates surrounding insect decline, with focus on the key drivers, trends among aquatic versus terrestrial insects, the role of pollutants, and mitigation measures.

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InsectExpo: What are the risks of agricultural pesticides to insects?

With observations of declining insects in agricultural landscapes, research is focusing on figuring out the role of potential stressors, such as structural homogeneity, fertilizer and pesticide inputs. In this blog, Carolina Honert explains how their project “InsectExpo” can fill these knowledge gaps.

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MSc thesis opportunity on method development and subsidy quality of stressed systems

We offer a master thesis at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Campus Landau) to develop a method determining multiple energy reserves in one insect sample. It will be used as tool to investigate changes in the subsidy quality of stressed systems.

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Documentary on insect decline in German agricultural landscapes and the role of agriculture

The German television shot a documentary on the observation of declining insects in Germany, and the science behind it. The film features researchers involved in a recent study entitled “More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas”.

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