Grid-based predictions of biodiversity and ecosystem services at different spatial scales

Felix Klaus completed his MSc in Biological Diversity, Ecology & Evolution at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen and the University of California in Davis, USA. He has worked on the effects of hedgerow plantings in the agricultural landscape on pollinating insects regarding their use of resources and pollen flow. His interest in ecological interactions is continued in his PhD research, which is part of the Research Training Group 1644 "Scaling Problems in Statistics". He works on tri-trophic interactions of cavity-nesting insects such as bees and wasps, their food resources, and their parasitoids in extensively managed grasslands in Central Germany. Unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with multispectral cameras will be used to map and monitor habitats in and around these high nature value calcareous grasslands. The 31 study sites have last been sampled using trap nests in 2011 and the potential effects of shrub encroachment, patch size, isolation, and landscape heterogeneity changing the insect communities will be analyzed.