When Josephine Ulrich and colleagues got the chance to work with the iDiv Ecotron, a system of experimental containers in Germany that lets researchers create and manipulate miniature ecosystems, they decided to investigate the effect of declining invertebrate populations on plant communities. Many studies have explored how projected changes in abiotic factors — rising temperatures, for example — influence plants, says Ulrich, a PhD student at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Friedrich Schiller University, but to look at biotic factors such as invertebrate loss is a new approach.
Source: Invertebrate density influences plant flowering times, abundance

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