Massimo Martini

Many heat-stressed tropical insects are reaching their limits Vast study in Peru and Kenya confirms limited defenses against rising temperatures, redoubling climate concerns

Insects living in the lowland tropics have evolved to deal with brutal heat. But many of them are close to their limit, according to a massive study that assessed the heat tolerance of hundreds of species. https://scim.ag/406Y5yh

Happy to have won third place for best poster at #ECTE2026!

We studied solitary bees and wasps nesting in standing and lying #deadwood 🪵🐝, all mediated by substrate humidity. Looking forward to getting this study publicly available!

@multitroph.bsky.social
@dfg.de

Also at #ECTE2026, you can find my poster showcasing our results from a deadwood manipulation #experiment on secondary saproxylic insects, within a manipulated tree richness gradient 🌳🪵🐝🐜. Room 033.

@soctropecol.bsky.social
@multitroph.bsky.social

Strengthening responsibilities to face global crises: A call to ecologists, environmental scientists and their societies Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

This is a publication I believe all ecologists should read and discuss.

How often have you asked yourself: Are we impactful enough in times of multiple environmental crises?

A collaborative effort of #ANdiNa

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

@multitroph.bsky.social

Excited to present my research at #ECTE2026. If you're interested in how biodiversity-ecosystem functioning #BEF relationships can change over the course of a decade, come to HS5 at 14:30 on Thursday! 🌿🐝🕙

@soctropecol.bsky.social
@unipassauresearch.bsky.social
@uni-freiburg.de
@dfg.de

Looking forward to showcase some of my work and to meet like-minded ecologists from all over 🌿🐝🐜

How scientists can contribute to the social movements essential to protecting climate and nature - npj Climate Action Scientists have much to contribute to the growing social movements pushing for urgent and transformative change to address the climate and biodiversity crises. Depending on their skills, interests and...

There is much to be done, at all levels.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Ecological insights from three decades of forest biodiversity experiments - Nature Reviews Biodiversity Experiments manipulating tree species diversity and measuring effects on ecosystem function have been important tools for assessing how biodiverse forests can accumulate biomass, store carbon and help...

Ecological insights from three decades of forest biodiversity experiments @natrevbiodiv.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Rapid Global Deforestation Leaves Forest‐Dependent Raptors With Half of Their Suitable Habitat Remaining

📄 buff.ly/g0CHFXG

Our new @nature.com shows that energy flows mediated by mammals and birds across sub-Saharan Africa have declined by >30% unevenly across functional groups, with major consequences ecosystem functions
shorturl.at/AD0Yb

The global biomass of mammals since 1850 - Nature Communications Here, the authors estimate mammalian biomass from the 1850’s to today, tracking an increase of over five-fold in human and domesticated mammal biomass and a two-fold decrease in wild mammal biomass. R...

Check this out: the global biomass of mammals since 1850
just out in @natcomms.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🌐

text with a picuture of gabreil rabinovich saying "Gabriel Rabinovich, immunologist, tumor biologist, and glycobiologist Writing has played a key role in my career as a researcher. I firmly believe that one does not simply write up results sequentially; instead, one tells a story. I've always enjoyed storytelling. After completing the experiments, I try to craft a narrative that appeals to an interdisciplinary audience, not just to specialists in my field. My goal is always for people from other disciplines to be able to understand my papers. Writing in a linear, step-by-step way can feel monotonous and dull. I try to construct a compelling story. Sometimes, it's not the question I asked at the beginning, but the one that emerges from all the results taken together. This approach has had a big impact on how my papers are received. When editors read something that tackles a meaningful question in the field, they're more likely to be positive with it. That’s why I put a lot of effort into the cover letters. They’re the first thing editors see, and I structure them point-by-point with clear logic to show that the paper addresses an open question in the literature. "

“You don’t just write results, you tell a story”
Gaby Rabinovich reminds us to write for an interdisciplinary audience, be honest about limits, and keep the big question clear
Read more in A Pocket Guide to Scientific Writing & Publishing!
mybook.to/ScienceGuide 🧪🌐📖

What makes leaf litter attractive to decomposers? 🍂
As Christian Wirth noted at ARBOfun last week, nutrient resorption varies among tree species - leaving litter feeders with a diverse buffet to choose from. #TreeDi-MultiTroph conference #Ecology #SoilLife #Biodiversity

Joint conference between @treedi.bsky.social and @multitroph.bsky.social has begun in Leipzig! Good way to start my last year of PhD 🕷🐛🐝🌿

Number of wild bee species at risk of extinction in Europe doubles in 10 years Number of endangered butterfly species also surging amid habitat destruction and global heating, finds study

Scary title for sure.. questionable picture 🤔🐝

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A sweat bee resting on a flower.

A new study in Science evaluating published data from 19 countries has pinpointed the minimum habitat levels needed to sustain pollinators in agricultural landscapes. https://scim.ag/3VIq4Cg

Syrphid fly pointing face first towards camera, big red eyes, perched on my finger

Syrphid fly perched on my finger, lateral view shows abdomen with its orange and black stripes resembling a bee

It's not only bees. Syrphid flies are also very important pollinators and are so gosh darn cute 😍

Episyrphus balteatus,☝️ for scale

📢Check out our latest BE-publication on #invertebrate 🐞abundance in #grasslands 🌱 published in @basicapplecol.bsky.social.

Reducing land use (single late #mowing) increased #insects by +41% after 1 yr and +99% after 3 yrs.
Species diversity, however, remained unchanged.

🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.ba...

Diversity in Resource Use Strategies Promotes Productivity in Young Planted Tree Species Mixtures By analyzing data from over 83,000 trees in 21 experiments across five continents, we found that forests with more species were more productive and had more stable growth. Productivity was driven mai....

🗞️New study in @globalchangebio.bsky.social 🗞️

🌳Diversity in resource use strategies promotes productivity across a global network of tree #diversity experiments?🌲

Read our new study led by Joel Jensen together with #TreeDivNet here:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides) decides whether to consume a warningly colored white-barred acraea butterfly (Telchinia encedon). Photo (c) Mike Rowe

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org

We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Species and trait abundance distributions as tools for understanding disturbance effects and community assembly in applied ecology Further insight into the links between disturbance and species abundance may come from the recognition that the species abundance distribution (SAD) is a special case of a broader concept, the trait ...

Our paper on species and trait abundance distributions in @jappliedecology.bsky.social is now out in an issue:

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Led by Werner Ulrich and many other great colleagues.

The german+austian+swiss conference of #ecology (gfö) just wrapped up, and I was stoked to present results from a long-term biodiversity study - a huge combined effort involving a decade of insect population monitoring.

I also managed to check out some entomological collections in Würzburg! 🐝

Pollinator‐Promoting Interventions in European Urban Habitats—A Synthesis Syntheses of urban pollinator-friendly management are lacking, hindering policy implementation compared to farmland. Addressing this gap, our re-analytical data synthesis demonstrates the generally p...

New Europe-wide study finds that efforts to provide pollinator habitat in urban areas - such as sowing wildflower mixes - really do work, boosting numbers of bees and butterflies: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

And that's #labwork also wrapped up! For the next year my PhD will exclusively exclusively involve writing manuscripts... I have mixed feelings about that 😅

This here is just a small part of the insects that we sampled. Some very cool bees and wasps, including potentially new species.

ITV-net: a dataset of intraspecific leaf traits data across major Italian habitats Over the last decades plant ecology has greatly benefited from open data on functional traits. Nowadays, several national and international trait databases are available, but trait data from Southe...

📢 ITV-net: the first Italian database on #PlantFunctionalTraits with #IntraspecificTraitVariability 🌱

ITV-net includes over 8,500 leaf trait records (LA/SLA) for 709 plant species across 8 Italian habitats, from coastal dunes to alpine grasslands.

#EnviXLab

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Here is a picture from above, showing the skull on the thorax and the gorgeous wing pattern

Ever seen a moth do some #pushups? 💪💪💪💪💪💪

This big guy came flying to our light trap! We handled him carefully and let him go shortly later. Here he's showing some defensive mechanism to scare us off.

Species: Greater death's head hawkmoth

Back in Jiangxi for one last PhD field trip. Couldn't help but immediately set up a light trap to see what's flying. Fingers crossed for some big beetles 🪲

Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food Puppet helps insect trick real termites into feeding it

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it.

Learn more during #InsectWeek: scim.ag/40mj1S8