During the last decades, biodiversity has dramatically decreased due to the impact of global change. So far, little is known about the consequences of declining diversity for micro-evolutionary trajectories of the persisting species and their adaptive abilities to maintain various ecosystem services and processes. Therefore, the research of my PhD project addresses the questions;

 
(1) how rapid and pervasive local adaptations (plant-soil feedbacks) are in response to changing local species diversity, and
(2) whether such diversity-related micro-evolutionary niche shifts affect species responses to global change drivers, such as drought and increased nitrogen deposition.

Eisenhauer, N., Wirsch, D., Cesarz, S., Craven, D., Dietrich, P., Friese, J., Helm, J., Hines, J., Schellenberg, M., Scherreiks, P., Schwarz, B., Uhe, C., Wagner, K., Steinauer, K., (2014):
Organic textile dye improves the visual assessment of the bait lamina test.
Applied Soil Ecology 82, 78-81.