Highlights from spring 2019

(top-left) PhD student Biruk Nurihun carried out his first fieldwork on the link between climate, coffee diseases and yield, and is placing the first of hundreds of climate loggers in southwestern Ethiopia, which is the area of origin of Arabica coffee (top-right) BSc student Cerise van Leeuwen and intern Anaís Carpelan examining the impact of fungal diseases on insect herbivory and pollination in Anemone nemorosa, a study that is part of the PhD project of Laura van Dijk (bottom-left) Together with NRM, Uppsala and KTH, we launched a major project to sample insect diversity at 200 locations across Sweden for an entire year using Malaise traps, with the help of 100 volunteers (www.insectbiomeatlas.com) (bottom-right) Álvaro started a series of experiments to disentangle the impact of spring phenology and pathogen infection on the preference and performance of multi-generational insects feeding on oak, including one of our favourite leaf miners, Tischeria ekebladella

Other major events:

  • Ryan McClory successfully defended his MSc thesis on the impacts of phenology and shade on growth and survival of oak seedlings, and their interactions with pathogens and herbivores
  • Anaís Carpelan joined our group during spring and summer, and was of great help to many of us during Anemone, oak and other lab- and field experiments
  • Ahmed Abdelfattah joined our team as an independent postdoctoral fellow to work on the microbial community on oak
  • Cerise van Leeuwen, a BSc student from the Netherlands, visited us this spring to do fieldwork on the pathogens and herbivores of Anemone nemorosa