For the Bachelor Honours Class 'Mass Extinction', students produced podcasts about the past, the present and the future of mass extinctions. What exactly is lost when a species goes extinct? What are the practical consequences? But also: does humanity have the moral duty to protect other species?

Does roadside management in the mid-west USA increase invertebrate diversity similar to practices in Europe?

How did toxin genes evolve from harmless physiological genes?

With the support of the Foundation for Refugee Students UAF, Russia expert Oshank Hashemi, a cum laude graduate of Leiden University, has won the Peter Baehr Prize 2016.

In our lives we often have little attention or appreciation for plants, let alone the ones we commonly call weeds. This inattention for plants has been described as plant blindness. The Stoepplantjes project aspires to decrease plant blindness by changing the image of weeds and using citizen science.…

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

The main purpose of DNAmarkerpoint is to better understand the ecology, evolution and biodiversity through the study of ancient- and modern DNA.

This research programme aims to increase the scientific understanding of how current and emerging anthropogenic threats affect biodiversity and ecosystem services to facilitate strategic management of natural resources. To this end, we address urgent challenges in relation to the mechanisms involved…

How do nonmotile microbes leverage communal motility?

We will study how inoculation of former arable land with soil (including the microbiome, soil fauna and seeds/rhizomes of ground flora) from old forests along with planting targeted tree species mixtures will improve productivity and more rapidly restore forest-adapted communities and ulttimately result…

Organic amendments applied to agricultural fields can partially offset our carbon emissions to the atmosphere and improve the resilience of agriculture to the effects of climate change. Driving these benefits, however, are complex and poorly understood interactions between organic amendment properties,…

What invertebrates are available to feed nestlings in an agricultural landscape of varied complexity?

What invertebrates live in the fields and edges? Do the populations change with landscape complexity?

Do understudied animals contain hidden species?

What are the phylogenetic relationships among the members of speciation bursts?

Which metabolites of sponge are influenced by individual environmental or biological factors?

Biodiversity enables ecosystems to thrive through the synergy of functional differences among organisms. While human well-being strongly depends on biodiversity-driven ecosystem services, human actions are also at the root of current unprecedented biodiversity declines.

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotores: B.W. Hoeksema; L.P. van Ofwegen

1. What is the exact role of PIN proteins in PAT? 2. How is PIN polarity established, and how is it modulated by AGC kinase-mediated phosphorylation? 3. What is the role of the AGC kinase, as modulators of PAT, in translating environmental signals, such as gravity, light or mechanical stress, to plant…

When do we define a piece of nature in the city as a park? And when is something a tree or shrub? It may seem obvious, but in scientific literature the definitions vary quite a bit. That makes comparisons difficult. Environmental scientist Joeri Morpurgo looked at the differences and designed a general…

This thesis aims to address offshore wind energy (OWE)-related environmental impacts.

Population growth, economic expansion and the associated land use caused an increase in the number of bird species facing extinction and a reduction in carbon storage worldwide. These are the findings of an international team of scientists, also from the Leiden University Institute of Environmental…

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotor: B.W. Hoeksema

How do balanced lethal systems originate and persist in nature?

How does invasive hybridization affect threatened native species?

Does a moving hybrid zone leave a genomic footprint?

Why is the swimming efficiency of the European eel higher than predicted?

Conference

A wide range of plant species is essential to our earth because of the different materials and foods these plants provide. But plant diversity has decreased drastically in recent decades. PhD candidate Kaixuan Pan explains what we can do to increase it once again.

Ben Wielstra studies hybrid zones, regions in which distinct populations of organisms meet, mate and produce genetically admixed offspring. In the journal Current Biology, he introduces hybrid zones in an accessible way.

Lecture

Ben Wielstra studies balanced lethal systems, in which half of the offspring die before birth. In the journal Current Biology, he explains in an accessible way how such a disadvantage can originate in nature.

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters

Niels Broekman did an internship at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, where he worked on, among other things, biodiversity advocacy. After his internship, he decided to go in a different direction: ‘An internship can be very enlightening in helping you figure out where your interests…

We examine how soil-derived legacy effects of plants structure natural ecosystems, determine aboveground plant insect interactions, and how we can use soil legacy effects to restore degraded ecosystems.

Promotores: J.A.van Veen, P.L.G.Klinkhamer. Co-promotor: E.E.Kuramae

Where did species survive the cold cycles of the current Ice Age?

Promotor: Prof.dr. E Gittenberger, Co-Promotores: C.H.J.M. Fransen, Dr. B.W. Hoeksema

What is the function of the insect serosa?

Taxonomy as a science has accumulated data and knowledge for more than 250 years.

Can birds - like people- ‘see’ voices and learn how to sing by listening and watching?

Promotores: G.R. de Snoo, W.T. de Groot, Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters