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Smaller fish and changing food webs – even where species numbers stay the same
24 Feb 2026 | Species numbers alone do not fully capture how ecosystems are changing. In a global study led by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the MLU, and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, scientists analysed long-term data from nearly 15,000 marine and freshwater fish communities. They found that fish food webs have changed substantially over recent decades, even in places where the number of species (species richness) has remained stable. Published in Science Advances, the study shows consistent shifts in species composition, body size, and feeding relationships, highlighting that changes in species traits such as body size and interactions can alter ecosystem structure without obvious changes in species richness.
Roadmap for Europe’s biodiversity monitoring system
24 Feb 2026 | Biodiversity is changing across the planet, yet governments still lack the robust, consistent data needed to track these changes and guide effective conservation. Now, a new study led by the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), and the MLU, proposes a comprehensive roadmap to build a modern, integrated Biodiversity Observation Network (BON) for Europe – one that could become a global model for biodiversity monitoring in the 21st century. The study has been published in "Nature Reviews Biodiversity".
Microelectronics: Researchers identify parent compound for chiral materials
29 Jan 2026 | Chirality is a fundamental property in nature. It means that an object cannot be made to coincide with its mirror image by rotation and translation. Physicists at MLU have now been able to show for the first time that there is a kind of precursor for electronically chiral materials. They discovered these materials together with the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics. The results, published in the journal “Nature Communications”, could pave the way for the production of thin layers with uniform chirality, providing important impetus for the next generation of microelectronics.
Pathogen hijacks fruit ripening program in citrus plants
19 Dez 2025 | The bacterium Xanthomonas citri activates parts of the ripening programme in the infected leaves of its host plant, which normally causes the fruit to become soft and sweet. This allows it to use the released sugar as food and grow up to a hundred times faster. An international research team led by the University of Tübingen and with the help of scientists at MLU has discovered exactly how this process works in detail. The results were published in “Science” and provide new approaches for combating citrus canker that is caused by X. citri.
