Research

HerbAdapt - Adaptation of understorey herbs to forest management
In this project we investigate adaptation of understorey herbs to forest management.


Back to the future - Seed banks as a tool to investigate recent adaptation to climate change
We use the resurrection approach to compare populations of 60 plant species from three regions (continental Europe, European Alps, Mediterranean region) from a few decades ago with the current situation to infer whether recent climate change caused rapid evolutionary changes.


Back to the wild - Combining transplant experiments with the resurrection approach to investigate rapid plant adaptations
We combine the resurrection approach with transplant experiments to study rapid evolutionary adaptations to recent environmental changes in four European plant species. We compare plants raised from seeds stored for several decades in a seed bank with plants raised from newly sampled seeds in both controlled common garden experiments as well as in the original populations in the field.


GrENE-net - Genomics of rapid Evolution in Novel Environments


EvoPlast - Evolution of plant phenotypic plasticity in response to grassland management
Theory predicts that temporal and spatial heterogeneity in environmental conditions should favour the evolution of phenotypic plasticity, which is an organism's ability to respond adaptively to such environmental changes. In managed grasslands, mowing, grazing and fertilization all create strongly temporally variable environmental conditions. In this Biodiversity Exploratories project we will investigate whether land use intensity relates to the strength of plant phenotypic plasticity, which would suggest rapid evolution of grassland species to land use management
.


AraBreed - Evolutionary responses of plants to environmental changes through the lens of ecological theories

Phenotypic plasticity and plant adaptation to variable climates
Changes in climate variability are one of the least understood aspects of global climate change. In this project, we test whether the ability of plants to deal with increased climate variability is a variable and evolvable trait, so that we can expect plants to adapt to such changes in the future


KÄMY - plant-herbivore interactions (Vincetoxicum hindurinaria)


Plant adaptations in the European Alps


Contact

Prof. Dr. J.F. Niek Scheepens

Plant Evolutionary Ecology 

Institute for Ecology, Evolution and Diversity

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Biologicum

Max-von-Laue-Str. 13

D-60438 Frankfurt am Main

Phone: +49 (0)69 798 42132