Species composition and trophic ecology of beetle communities in disturbed landscapes (Working title)

Description

The cluster elaborates characteristic signatures of disturbances in the Lower Lusatian post-mining landscapes based on community changes and carbon balances of terrestrial and aquatic landscape sub-systems compared with undisturbed reference systems. The “signature” of mining lakes is characterized by specific water qualities compared to adjacent landscapes which were not affected by mining activities. Acidic mining lakes are very young ecological systems with specific types of primary succession due to the acidification. This is particularly true with regard to limited food resources, limited structural diversity and the complexity of food webs. A serious problem is the dominance of mixotrophic species: the bacterial production exceeds the primary production and seems to be decoupled. Such ecologically relevant state transitions characterize matter fluxes from aquatic systems into food webs of the surrounding terrestrial habitats. In a terrestrial context, natural fires constitute another major disturbance that decouples consumers and resources in local food webs. The trajectory of recovery to pre-fire conditions in disturbed landscapes is a major component of the ecosystems resilience, which is addressed in a second subsystem focusing on terrestrial food webs. The interactions between organisms at a) the interface between disturbed and rather undisturbed post-mining lakes and adjacent terrestrial habitats and b) the impact of wildfires in disturbed landscapes will be investigated by means of community analyses and studies of naturally occurring carbon isotopes. These results will provide novel insights into effects of man-made and natural disturbances on food-webs and local communities in disturbed landscapes of Lower Lusatia.

Lanya Feng was born in Chongqing, China. In 2014, she finished her Bachelor degree in the faculty of Resources Science and Technology in Beijing Normal University, with the thesis “Research of Spatio-temporal Land Use Coverage & Change and Ecosystem Service in Dianchi Basin”. One year later, she came to BTU and continued Master study in ERM program and graduated in 2018 with the thesis “Diversity and Nutritional Condition of Emerging Carabidae (Coleoptera) in Cereal Fields and Fallows in Southern Sweden”.  Since May 2018, Lanya Feng has started Doctoral study in the Department of Ecology in the faculty of Environment and Natural Science in BTU.