Bezemer Group

Biodiversity is declining worldwide and there is an urgent need to quantify the roles that species play in ecosystems, how species interact in food webs, and the consequences of loss of species from ecosystems for those interactions. We study how the diversity and functioning of multitrophic communities associated to individual plants is influenced by the identity of the neighbouring plants and by characteristics of the landscape the focal plant is embedded in. In this work we compare aboveground and belowground communities associated to the plant ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris) and study how the diversity of the plant community affects these multitrophic communities, and the behaviour of individuals in these communities. We aim to disentangle the importance of host plant quality and of characteristics of the surrounding plant community for aboveground and belowground interactions.

 

We also study how changes in plant diversity affect long-term dynamics of plant, soil and insect communities, and the spatial and temporal stability of these ecosystems. To study this we use a series of restoration grasslands that differ in time since abandonment of agricultural practices, biodiversity field experiments, and microcosm experiments. In restoration grasslands, we also examine how manipulation of soil biodiversity via transplantation of soil can aid nature restoration on former arable fields.

 

Outside the NIOO we collaborate with research groups from Wageningen University (Jan Willem van Groenigen from the Soil Quality Group and Liesje Mommer from the Nature Restoration and Plant Ecology Group) in a thematic programme funded by the Graduate School Production Ecology and Resource Conservation of Wageningen University on “the ecology of the biobased economy”. With two appointed Post Docs we organize workshops and examine in a field experiment how amelioration of biochar to soil of a grassland restoration site affects the development of plants, insect and soil biota. The biochar (pyrolyzed biomass) that we use is produced from grassland biomass collected from the same restoration site.