Research participants

Since the establishment of the Biodiversity Exploratories (BE) in 2006, scientists from a total of 218 funded projects from 85 institutions have conducted research on the research areas of the Exploratories. In addition, cooperation projects are continuosly added, enriching the research platform with further research approaches. The wide range of participating institutions and the collaborative research design make the BE a unique and diverse research platform. The map of Germany shows all currently involved institutions, former participants and the number of researchers per location.

Steering Committee

Currently the steering committee consists of eleven members.

Three of these members, the speaker of the Biodiversity Exploratories, Nico Blüthgen, and the project leaders of the three exploratories, Nico Blüthgen, Christian Ammer and Wolfgang Weisser, are appointed as ex-officio members. The other members are, on the one hand, a representative of the central data management, Birgitta König-Ries, and, on the other, representatives of the central disciplines. The steering committe meets at regular intervals to discuss important decisions and may be reconstituted once a year .

Advisory Board

The Advisory Board is an external advisory body consisting of four international and highly respected researchers. It advises the BE on strategic and content-related matters and thus promotes its research development.

The Advisory Board currently consists of the following members:

Young Scientists

An important goal of the BE is the promotion of young researchers. This is supported by a diverse range of workshops, mentoring and exchange programmes. The BE offers the following programmes:

• Thematic and soft-skill workshops (e.g., R-course, popular science writing, SEM)
• Mentoring programme (a postdoc advises one or more PhDs on scientific issues)
• Exchange programme (research stay at another BE institution or university)

In order to represent the interests of the young scientists in the BE community, PhD and postdoc speakers are elected once a year at the BE Assembly. They convene regular meetings in which current interests and challenges are discussed and then forwarded to the BEO and the steering committee for timely implementation. Current speakers are:

Thematic groups

Within the BE there are also various thematic groups with different topics, which on the one hand enable better internal communication and coordination with regard to complementarity and identify research gaps, but on the other hand are also intended to stimulate synthesis between the different projects.

There are currently ten thematic groups:

• Plants
• Animals
• Biotic interactions
• Soil ecology
• Grassland (incl. joint multi-site experiments REX/LUX)
• Forest (incl. joint multi-site experiments FOX)
• BELongDead
• BEClimwood
• Remote sensing, landscape and modelling
• Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning (BEF)
• Social-Ecology
• Arable fields

Each thematic group has a group coordinator.

Collaborations

The BE collaborates with a large number of self-financed projects. All current and past cooperation partners can be viewed under projects (filter selection ‘cooperation projects’).

Collaborations can be agreed at all times after checking the suitability of the project. Applications must be submitted to the steering committee. Detailed information on how to apply can be obtained from the central BEO coordination office (beo@bio.tu-darmstadt.de).