How can we monitor and protect biological and cultural diversity in Suriname best? What can we learn from local knowledge and customs associated with biodiversity? How can we understand current species, acoustical, behavioural, and ecological diversity from an evolutionary perspective? Can we predict…

Freshwater biodiversity has been threatened by eutrophication due to excessive nutrients in the environment. Releasing the freshwater species from such pressures requires efforts from industry and manufacturers to avoid emissions to vulnerable and high-risk regions.

Do sustainability values play a role in motivating people to act for biodiversity in successful projects and in successful leadership action? And how could these values be incorporated in current economic valuation methods?

What are the effects of light pollution from cities and bridges and noise pollution from passing vessels and nearby road traffic on migratory fish passage and spawning in rivers?

The Vallesian, 11.1-9 Ma, was a special time in the Vallès-Penedes basin near Barcelona, where a biodiversity hotspot existed. Europe had a subtropical climate, with rhinos, forest giraffes, lions, hyenas, flying squirrels and primates.

Universiteit Leiden in cooperation with Naturalis, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and University Wageningen is foundig a center for biodiversity. They will receive 30 million euros from The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).

An international team including Peter van Bodegom shows how trait variability can be incorporated in Essential Biodiversity Variables to allow monitoring how organisms respond to global change. They published their results in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

On December 16th 23 students of the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University took part of the first total species inventory to assess the effectiveness of an underwater landscape that was build in March 2003 to restore the biodiversity in an area where the environment was destroyed by…

How do humans, non-humans and their interactions and relations shape the home as ecological and social space?

Biodiversity in the Netherlands is having a tough time. Professor of Natural Capital Koos Biesmeijer combines research with practical advice: from the greening of industrial parks to solutions inspired by hi-tech nature. Inaugural lecture 9 March.

Inaugural address of Prof.dr.ir. Peter van Bodegom

Through various initiatives, Leiden University is trying to make people aware of the importance of biodiversity: the cultivation of a wide variety of micro-organisms, animals and plant species. This is important because in the Netherlands biodiversity has declined from about 40 percent in 1900 to about…

In his dissertation Michiel Hooykaas outlines the results of six empirical research projects focused at biodiversity awareness in the Netherlands, specifically people’s knowledge about animals.

What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves, Menno Schilthuizen reports from the front lines of evolutionary biology, on a quest to make sense of the origins, workings and evolution of our and other species’ reproductive selves.

Promotor: J.A. van Veen, Co-promotor: E.E. Kuramae

How can species literacy in the Netherlands be explained and improved?

Does roadside management in the mid-west USA increase invertebrate diversity similar to practices in Europe?

In our lives we often have little attention or appreciation for plants, let alone the ones we commonly call weeds. This inattention for plants has been described as plant blindness. The Stoepplantjes project aspires to decrease plant blindness by changing the image of weeds and using citizen science.…

The main purpose of DNAmarkerpoint is to better understand the ecology, evolution and biodiversity through the study of ancient- and modern DNA.

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

This research programme aims to increase the scientific understanding of how current and emerging anthropogenic threats affect biodiversity and ecosystem services to facilitate strategic management of natural resources. To this end, we address urgent challenges in relation to the mechanisms involved…

We will study how inoculation of former arable land with soil (including the microbiome, soil fauna and seeds/rhizomes of ground flora) from old forests along with planting targeted tree species mixtures will improve productivity and more rapidly restore forest-adapted communities and ulttimately result…

What invertebrates are available to feed nestlings in an agricultural landscape of varied complexity?

What invertebrates live in the fields and edges? Do the populations change with landscape complexity?

Biodiversity enables ecosystems to thrive through the synergy of functional differences among organisms. While human well-being strongly depends on biodiversity-driven ecosystem services, human actions are also at the root of current unprecedented biodiversity declines.

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotores: B.W. Hoeksema; L.P. van Ofwegen

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotor: B.W. Hoeksema

A wide range of plant species is essential to our earth because of the different materials and foods these plants provide. But plant diversity has decreased drastically in recent decades. PhD candidate Kaixuan Pan explains what we can do to increase it once again.

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters

Taxonomy as a science has accumulated data and knowledge for more than 250 years.