Network Member Profiles
Jens Dauber, Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries
Biography
I studied Biology with focus on Zoology, Botany, Palaeontology and Soil Science at the University of Mainz, Germany, and finished with a Diploma in Biology in 1995. After completing my diploma thesis on ant communities along an urban gradient in the City of Mainz, I went to Dr Wolters' lab at the University of Giessen to do a PhD on the effects of land-use change on biodiversity (again focusing on ants) in an agricultural region within the framework of the project "Land-use Options for Peripheral Regions" (SFB 299). I finished my PhD in 2001 and continued working in Giessen as post-doctoral research fellow in the project "BIOPLEX - Biodiversity and Landscape Complexity in Agricultural Areas under Global Change". I acted as leader of the Landscape Ecology group within the Department of Animal Ecology. In 2003 I visited Dr Bengtsson's lab at the SLU Uppsala, Sweden, for three month to study ant communities in fragmented semi-natural grasslands. I finished my post-doctoral time at the University of Giessen by obtaining the habilitation and the venia legendi (licence for lecturing) in Animal Ecology and Systematics in 2007. End of 2006 I moved to Leeds, UK, to work as research fellow with Dr Kunin in the EU FP6 project ALARM. In May 2008 I moved to Dublin, Ireland, to take up the position of project manager of SIMBIOSYS at Trinity College with Dr Stout. Since 2010 I have been working at the Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries, Institute of Biodiversity, in the areas of agrobiodiversity and biodiversity monitoring.
I am interested in the interplay between landscapes, environmental change and biodiversity. To understand the general principles that control biodiversity over multiple spatial and temporal scales is one of the main challenges in ecological research and conservation biology. In particular, I am interested in the diversity, community assembly and interactions of the "little things that run the world" (i.e. arthropods) and the landscape and habitat factors controlling these. To gain knowledge of these relationships is of increasing importance considering the extensive and rapid changes in landscapes and biodiversity due to land-use and climate changes. Therefore, the main lines of research I follow are within the fields of Community Ecology, Landscape Ecology, Soil Ecology und Applied Entomology. I use experimental and field approaches to answer the fundamental questions: (i) Which are the most important drivers of local and regional community assembly? (ii) On which spatial and temporal scales do these drivers operate and how do they interact? (iii) How do environmental changes affect populations, communities and metacommunities, species interactions and ecosystem services? The spatial scales of my studies range from European landscapes to single ant mounds.
Contact
jens.dauber@vti.bund.de
Research Interests
Landscape ecology - ecosystem services - biodiversity - conservation - insects - soil ecology - above-below ground species interactions - ecosystem functioning - ecosystem engineering.
Themes
Earth.
Selected Publications
Dauber, J., Biesmeijer, J.C., Gabriel, D., Kunin, W.E., Lamborn, E., Meyer, B., Nielsen, A., Potts, S.G., Stuart, P.M., Sõber, V., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Settele, J., Stout, J.C., Teder, T., Tscheulin, T., Vivarelli, D. and Petanidou, T. (2010) Effects of patch size and density on flower visitation and seed set of wild plants: a pan-European approach, Journal of Ecology, 98, 188–196.
Dauber, J., Niechoj, R., Baltruschat, H., Wolters, V. (2008) Ant soil engineering increases grass root arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization, Biology and Fertility of Soils, 44, 791-796.
Dauber, J., Bengtsson, J., Lenoir, L. (2006) Evaluating effects of habitat loss and land-use continuity on ant species richness in seminatural grassland remnants, Conservation Biology, 20, 1150-1160.
Dauber, J., Purtauf, T., Allspach, A., Frisch, J., Voigtländer, K., Wolters, V. (2005). Local versus landscape controls on diversity: a test using surface-dwelling soil macroinvertebrates of differing mobility, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 14, 213-221.
Dauber, J., Hirsch, M., Simmering, D., Waldhardt, R., Otte, A., Wolters, V. (2003) Landscape structure as an indicator of biodiversity: matrix effects on species richness, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 98, 321-329.