Highlights from autumn 2019

(top-left) We now started to trap insects in fifty national parks across Madagascar using Malaise traps, and Ayco Tack visited Madagascar to launch the associated project on ecosystem functioning, which aims to (partly) answer the question of what all those insects are actually doing (www.insectbiomeatlas.com) (top-right) Postdoc Ahmed Abdelfattah designed a microcosm to grow our beloved oaks, to be used in a series of experiments on the origin and trajectory of belowground and aboveground microbial communities (bottom-left) MSc student Hannah Burger placed out 2400 clay caterpillars in southwestern Ethiopia to investigate the top-down control of herbivores on Arabica coffee (bottom-right) The survey of the spatial dynamics of the insect community on oaks on the island Wattkast in southwestern Finland went on for the sixteenth year in a row, and was this year organized from Stockholm

Other major events:

  • After a PhD and short postdoc, we are sad that Pil Rasmussen left our lab…but she started a nice new postdoc Denmark!