Strengthening the impact of biodiversity conservation.
Hi! I am a conservation biologist and ecologist working internationally in the field of Conservation Science. My research and outreach activities integrate inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives into a bigger picture of biodiversity conservation and management. I currently lead four research projects that are focused on the conservation and management of biodiversity in tropical cacao and mediterranean olive agroforesty systems: "ECO-CACAO", "ECO-OLIVES", "COMPASS" & "SOUNDS WILD"
My projects focus on the conservation of terrestrial biodiversity through the understanding and management of ecological functions, services and dis-services mediated by birds, bats and arthropods. Cross-disciplinary concepts continuously flow into the design, application and communication of my work - for example, through collaboration with sustainability stakeholders, social scientists and journalists, or the co-development of concepts for advanced interaction and decision-making.
The outcomes of my projects strengthen transdisciplinary perspectives on sustainable land use development and are translated to diverse audiences to promote the implementation of scientific evidence into practice. These goals are also the basis of my teaching and mentoring at the University of Vienna (UVIE), the supervision of international theses, and my work as an Associate Editor for scientific journals (BIOC & PECON). The variety of this work reflects the diversity of perspectives that are key to inform and promote solutions for sustainable transformation processes to the benefit of the environment and human well-being.
My research in keywords (alphabetic order): Agroecology, Biodiversity Conservation, Conservation Science, Cross-disciplinary approaches, Ecological Modelling, Ecosystem Service Management, Environmental Education, Functional Diversity Analyses, Landscape Ecology, Multitrophic Interactions, Science Communication, Socio-Ecology
Short CV | Publications | Projects | Talks | ORCID | Elise Richter Network (short bio) | Twitter | Contact
Hi! I am a conservation biologist and ecologist working internationally in the field of Conservation Science. My research and outreach activities integrate inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives into a bigger picture of biodiversity conservation and management. I currently lead four research projects that are focused on the conservation and management of biodiversity in tropical cacao and mediterranean olive agroforesty systems: "ECO-CACAO", "ECO-OLIVES", "COMPASS" & "SOUNDS WILD"
My projects focus on the conservation of terrestrial biodiversity through the understanding and management of ecological functions, services and dis-services mediated by birds, bats and arthropods. Cross-disciplinary concepts continuously flow into the design, application and communication of my work - for example, through collaboration with sustainability stakeholders, social scientists and journalists, or the co-development of concepts for advanced interaction and decision-making.
The outcomes of my projects strengthen transdisciplinary perspectives on sustainable land use development and are translated to diverse audiences to promote the implementation of scientific evidence into practice. These goals are also the basis of my teaching and mentoring at the University of Vienna (UVIE), the supervision of international theses, and my work as an Associate Editor for scientific journals (BIOC & PECON). The variety of this work reflects the diversity of perspectives that are key to inform and promote solutions for sustainable transformation processes to the benefit of the environment and human well-being.
My research in keywords (alphabetic order): Agroecology, Biodiversity Conservation, Conservation Science, Cross-disciplinary approaches, Ecological Modelling, Ecosystem Service Management, Environmental Education, Functional Diversity Analyses, Landscape Ecology, Multitrophic Interactions, Science Communication, Socio-Ecology
Short CV | Publications | Projects | Talks | ORCID | Elise Richter Network (short bio) | Twitter | Contact
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News & Updates
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We have a new PROJECT OVERVIEW PAGE which is still under construction but already gives a good overview of our current activities. The page construction is still in progress and we thank you for your interest and patience until then!
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We always welcome proposals for scientific theses: please send a CV and concrete ideas for a research project considering funding options to me.
August 2023
Our manuscript on "Cross-pollination with native genotypes improves fruit set and yield quality of Peruvian cacao" has been published in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. With our ECO-CACAO project, we are taking a closer look at the importance of genetic diversity in cocoa growing areas for the sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Two new master's students are starting soon in our projects and several updates are planned for the upcoming fall field season - so please visit our project page for more information and stay tuned!
July 2023
We are excited to have our "AgroEcoList 1.0: A checklist to improve reporting standards in ecological research in agriculture" published in PlosOne - and look forward to building on it in future projects and collaborations. We also shared and discussed another project report on the progress of ECO-OLIVES with our local partners and stakeholders in Italy - based on which we will develop international surveys. Our website of the SOUNDS WILD project has received several updates and we started the "Creative Challenge" for schools in Austria that runs over the summer and are looking forward to receiving submissions on birds, bats and ecosystem services! Please visit our project page for more information.
June 2023
Our field work season of spring 2023 in ECO-OLIVES in Italy was successfully completed despite challenging weather conditions while our large team of ECO-CACAO in Peru continues to mastering their work in the tropical environments, and the school workshops of SOUNDS.WILD in Austria have continued - we are very proud of our dedicated teams (follow us on Twitter for updates)! In addition, I had the opportunity to present our work to our project partners in Italy and Indonesia (see "Talks & Events" for recordings and PDF's of the slides).
May 2023
We are proud to have a new publication online in Ecological Applications, showing that "Birds and bats enhance cacao yield despite suppressing arthropod mesopredation"- these findings are not only relevant for cacao agroforestry systems, but may also help us to better understand the complex roles of plant-animal interactions depending on local management and landscape context!
April 2023
This month was entirely dedicated to our fieldwork and stakeholder workshops in Italy, Peru and Indonesia! Our new project overview page has already gathered some materials to provide a better overview of our many activities - and it is far from complete (but soon!). So keep checking back and stay tuned please - in between we also give some short updates via the @AGROECODIV-Twitter account
March 2023
We are very happy to continue with the field work for our projects ECO-OLIVES and ECO-CACAO and are already very excited about the results! With this month we also start our new science communication project SOUNDS WILD (follow us on our Instagram & YouTube channels) which will be integrated into ECO-OLIVES and strongly complements it with communication and art-based work packages (with focus on young target groups)! We are also starting to work with the newly funded equipment from Wildlife Acoustics - so there's a lot of hands-on work ahead and we'll keep you posted!
February 2023
Two new articles were published online this month (see publications & press) and I am very honored to have been nominated by the University of Vienna for the Austian State Award for Excellent Teaching, the Ars Docendi 2023!
This month we are already starting the second phase of fieldwork and transdisciplinary workshops of our projects ECO-CACAO, ECO-OLIVES, and SOUNDS WILD - a new website and new accounts on various social media will be online soon. So please stay tuned :)
January 2023
We are busily planning the fieldwork phases of our projects ECO-CACAO, ECO-OLIVES, and SOUNDS WILD (with support from Widlife Acoustics) projects - as well as other big plans for this year.
I'm also very happy to announce that the year is starting with a new publication: Birds and bats enhance yields in Afrotropical cacao agroforests only under high tree-level shade cover (in AEE)
I wish you all a healthy, happy and successful 2023!
December 2022
Lots of fantastic news - we have received three additional grants for our ECO-OLIVES project: The science communication project SOUNDS WILD (funded by FWF) will fund a PhD on bats and socio-ecological issues; a PhD grant (funded by German Academic Scholarship Foundation) will fund another PhD on birds and multitrophic interactions - and both projects will benefit from excellent recording equipment (funded by Wildlife-Acoustics)!
In addition, three new articles have been published in December (see full citations under "Publications & Press") - one on Recommendations for making editorial boards diverse and inclusive (in TREE); another one on Lessons learned from the Second International Agrobiodiversity Congress (in Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health) and one on Socio‐ecological benefits of fine‐flavor cacao in its center of origin (in Conservation Letters).
November 2022
A very short month in which we are still busy with a lot of field work - as well as a submission for BIODIVERSA+ and the submission phase of our Special Issue on "Knowledge Shortfalls in Conservation Science" (coming up in Biological Conservation early next year).
I am also honored to have received an award for the most cited review article in Basic and Applied Ecology (for this paper on exclusion experiments of birds and bats) from the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ) - many thanks to all colleagues who have considered, supported, and even cited our work!
October 2022
We are excited that our article with "Recommendations for making editorial boards diverse and inclusive" has been published in TREE!
Our team member Tara-Hanf Dressler has received a grant from Wildlife-Acoustics for bat recordings in ECO-OLIVES - we are looking forward to working with the new equipment!
This month, we are still busy in the field with bat recordings in Peru (ECO-CACAO) and collecting olive harvest and biodivesity data in Italy (ECO-OLIVES) - and happy to announce that in November we will offer two new master theses in each of the projects - so stay tuned :)
September 2022
We are proud to present a new paper in ProcB from the DiFFcacao-project in Peru (available here) that was even featured in a Nature Research Highlight - huge congrats to Justine Vansynghel who lead this effort as part of her PhD (see here Twitter thread here)!
Currently, we are very busy with field work for ECO-OLIVES - recording birds, bats, arthropods and olive tree data on landsape scale. We are in the middle of the second field season and can't wait to analyze the results - until then we are in close exchange with our partners from the FRAMEwork project in Italy, as well as with local and international stakeholders and are happy about the successful development of this exciting project! In the ECO-CACAO project, the team is also busy in the field: already in the first field season, our two PhDs are working with four master students and two local cacao cooperatives (Choba-Choba and Acopagro). There will be regular updates from both projects via our joint Twitter channel - so stay tuned and feel free to contact us if there are any questions. New master thesis projects will also be announced from October/November via this website and the website of the Biodiversity Dynamics & Conservation Group :)
August 2022
It was very exiting to join the ECCB conference in Prague this month and present a modified version of my presentation on "Overcoming Implicit Bias in Ecology and Conservation Publishing" (see July update below for the PDF). I very much enjoyed the in-person meetings in the midst of this office-intensive month after and before intensive field seasons, looking forward to exciting collaborations and submissions for our forthcoming Special Issue in Biological Conservation on
Knowledge Shortfalls in Conservation Sciences.
July 2022
Finally back to a in-person Meeting of the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) - this time in the beautiful city of Cartagena - and to the field in Peru (Carolina, Blanca and Pablo have started their postdoctoral and doctoral research in ECO-CACAO - stay tuned via Twitter)! Our eargerly awaited symposium on "Overcoming implicit bias in the tropical science community" demonstrated that we face complex challenges in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion among our own ranks - but also that we have many straightoward solutions at hand that can be immediately implemented into scientific best practice to support the achievement of our shared goals as a community. Find the first two talks of the symposium here (PDF Symposium Introduction & PDF Authorship Bias) and stay tuned for the PDFs/recordings of other talks of this session that will be posted here ASAP!
June 2022
Such a special time right now! I'm beyond grateful for having received a Teaching Award in the category "Communicating the Relevance and Impact of Course Content" by the University of Vienna. It has been an extremely busy month in which I completed intensive trainings for my new projects, wrote and submitted a project grant and had my very first hearing for a tenure track position! To my colleagues of the Elise Richter Network (ERN), Women in Biology (WoBio) and the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) & its DEI Committe: thank you all very much for your support and stay tuned!
May 2022
This month has been incredibly productive and exciting! Again, a new article went online from our project REGRASS in Biological Conservation! We kicked of our project ECO-OLIVES in the field, even got featured on YouTube (canopy fogging is really a wild method - but I can't wait for the metabarcoding results!) and we had our first meeting with organic olive farming stakeholders in Germany and Austria. Our new project ECO-CACAO has been featured in a very nice Rudolphina article - on the same day I joined a Women in Biology strategy workhop and got honoured for my Elise-Richter research project and met many fellows from the Elise Richter Network. I'm so much looking forward to the next few months full of field work, exciting meetings like ATBC 2022 (in person AND abroad - wow!) and new publications - so please stay tuned, we're just getting started :)
April 2022
Already at the beginning of this month, I have good news to share: two new publications are out from our projects DiFFcacao and REGRASS (see here); my new research project "ECO-OLIVES" has been featured in a STANDARD newspaper article and I joined the Women in Biology Network at the University of Vienna. Behind the scenes, we make good progress with the selection of study sites for "ECO-OLIVES" and "ECO-CACAO" and will launch our new project website in May. For all agroecologist: we are currenntly running a survey about reporting standards in agroecology that is lead by members and partners of the EU SHOWCASE project - please have a look and feel free to share! More exciting news (and articles!) coming up soon - thank you for staying tuned.
February/March 2022
The war in Ukraine currently overshadows everything and yet does not stop us from moving forward - on the contrary, there is even a lot of solidarity and new cooperation coming up! Above of this update and in my Twitter you can see how we support #ScienceForUkraine and watch our progress in building our new projects (also see our new Twitter account "AgroEcoDiv"). We're holding back on superficial social media posts right now but are still happy to say that we're making good progress and will soon be able to share more good news about publications, projects and collaborations! Never let it get you down.
January 2022
Major news: We are hiring a PhD to join our amazing international team in the "ECO-CACAO" project! Please share this job posting with potentially interested candidates or simply retweet it - and thank you very much for your support. This and next month, everything revolves around the preparations for my two new projects "ECO-CACAO" & "ECO-OLIVES". I'm honored to be part of the Elise Richter Fellowship Network now and look forward to being able to fully focus on my research projects now - after so many years of fighting precarious employment and multiple biases in academia! Check back from time to time, I'll keep you posted.
