Specht, Valentin

Soil food webs and energy fluxes in grasslands

My PhD project aims to improve the understanding of the structure and dynamics of soil food webs and the energy fluxes of grassland ecosystems. I seek to quantify the effects of plant diversity and soil and plant community history on the soil animal community with the potential effects of seasonality and climate extremes. Utilizing the Jena Experiment as the study site provides a suitable experimental design to explore biodiversity effects on soil food webs. To get insights into energy fluxes and trophic positions of single species within the food web the analysis of stable isotopes of nitrogen and carbon will be used. Potential feedback loops between plant communities and soil animal communities could be detected.
My scientific background is broad in ecology due to my bachelor studies of environmental sciences at Leuphana University and my master studies of Landscape ecology at the University of Hohenheim. I wrote my master thesis at the University of Copenhagen investigating the nutritional niches and trophic interactions of two co-existing tropical ant species.