Genetic diversity - University of Tartu Landscape Biodiversity Group

14.03.2023

Improving the Functional Connectivity of Grassland Networks for Plant-Pollinator Interactions (FuncNet)

Loss in the area and connectivity of natural and semi-natural habitats in Europe over the last hundred years has placed not only numerous species under threat, but is also jeopardizing interactions between species crucial for maintaining important ecosystem functions, such as pollination. Despite protected areas covering now about a quarter of the land area of European Union, biodiversity has continued to decrease with only a few exceptions, suggesting that bold biodiversity-oriented governance is required also in landscapes beyond protected areas. Landscapes surrounding "islands" of the still well-preserved habitats and protected biodiversity hotspots have to support exchange of individuals and genes between isolated plant and animal populations. Maintenance of such functional networks is vital for preserving genetic variation of populations, which, in turn, is necessary for adapting to climate change.

The joint project called FuncNet led by the University of Tartu and consisting of researchers from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and Sweden will improve understanding of the spatio-temporal effects of the area and structural connectivity of semi-natural grasslands - the hotspots of European biodiversity - on various aspects of plant-pollinator interactions in European rural landscapes.

The area and connectivity of the historic, exceptionally diverse grassland habitats considered in the project have been greatly reduced over the course of a century due to changes in land use, threatening the functioning and resilience of plant-pollinator networks.

Together with partners, the researchers of the University of Tartu's Landscape Biodiversity workgroup will study:

the effect of both current and historic landscape characteristics in the study regions on plant and pollinator diversity in structurally well-connected and fragmented grassland systems;
focusing on both good-quality grassland patches as well as on other landscape elements (small grassland remnants, grassy verges, power-line clear-cuts) to determine the role of these elements in supporting plants, pollinators and their interactions;
the availability of floral resources for pollinators by carrying out pollen metabarcoding studies;
pollinator visitation, fitness, genetic diversity and gene flow of an insect-pollinated self-incompatible grassland plant to further clarify the functioning of plant-pollinator interactions in maintaining the well-being and adaptive potential of insect-pollinated wild plants;
the main stakeholder groups and explore what are their motivations and options to plan and manage remnant and marginal landscape elements in a biodiversity-friendly way.

Building on the results, the project will propose tools to maintain sustainable levels of biodiversity at landscape, community and genetic level through securing resilient plant-pollinator interactions, and will aim to propose win-win solutions for different stakeholder groups in supporting plant-pollinator networks of European rural landscapes through improved multi-actor governance.

Principal investigator: Tsipe Aavik

Partners: Czech Academy of Sciences, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Catholic University of Leuven

Funding: Biodiversa+ / Ministry of Environment

Project volume: 150 000 euros

Duration: 01.03.2023–28.02.2026

See also the the project description in ETIS

21.04.2022

Restoring and promoting a long term sustainable management of Fennoscandian wooded meadows in Estonia and Latvia (WOODMEADOWLIFE)

Duration: 1 November 2021 - 31 December 2026

The Estonian-Latvian joint LIFE project (LIFE20 NAT/EE/000074) "Restoring and promoting a long-term sustainable management of Fennoscandian wooded meadows in Estonia and Latvia" focuses on the restoration of wooded meadows in Estonia and Latvia, creation of sustainable solutions for maintenance and on raising public awareness of the natural and cultural heritage of wooded meadows and their protection and management. WOODMEADOWLIFE will improve the conservation status of wooded meadows in Boreal Biogeographic region by restoring Estonian and Latvian wooded meadows and establishing the system for their long-term management throughout both countries. By doing that, it will significantly contribute to the overall conservation status of 6530* in the EU, as both countries host 60% of all wooded meadows in the Boreal Biogeographic region.
The overall long-term objective of this project is to restore significant areas of priority EU habitat 6530* Fennoscandian wooded meadows (700 ha in two countries), develop agreements, guidelines and smart solutions for their future management and highlight their ecosystem services, ecological functions and unique heritage value in both countries.

Project participants: Aveliina Helm, Triin Reitalu, Elisabeth Prangel, Elvi Liiv

Funding: LIFE program, Environmental Investment Centre (KIK)

See also the project's page on Environmental Board's webpage.

18.04.2022

Interactive effects of local and landscape scale restoration of semi-natural grasslands and agricultural fields on species interactions and ecosystem functions (InterRest)

Duration: 2022-2025

Calcareous grasslands were created by traditional land use in European cultural landscapes and are one of the most species-rich habitat types. They harbour many rare and highly endangered species but are nowadays often threatened, mainly by abandonment and eutrophication. Hence, restoration measures are urgently needed. However, transnational restoration approaches are missing and evaluations within regional restoration schemes focus usually only on indicator species or species richness and ignore their biotic interactions, ecosystem functions and the landscape context. Especially species interactions are important indicators of restoration success as they are often more sensitive to environmental changes and determine vital functions that are necessary to stabilize ecosystems.

In this project we will investigate species interactions across different trophic levels including (1) plant-soil, (2) plant-pollinator and (3) bird-food resource interactions, in restored and degraded calcareous grasslands that are embedded in different socio-ecological and landscape contexts in three countries (Germany, Spain and Estonia). Additionally, we will measure ecosystem functions including soil functions, pollination and predation. We hypothesize that local restoration measures will lead to more complex and stable interactions and improved ecosystem functions compared to degraded sites. Moreover, we will investigate whether landscape-scale restoration with agri-environment schemes can make local restoration more effective through additive or synergistic effects. We will also analyse the social contexts of the restoration programs and identify key actors who are necessary to achieve local and landscape restoration goals. The results of our project will contribute to several Aichi targets by focussing on habitats with extremely high conservation value. They will inform the European Habitats Directive on the effects of restoration measures on species interactions and ecosystem functions and how they are linked to social networks. Knowledge of the contribution of agri-environment schemes at the landscape scale to the restoration of calcareous grasslands can be integrated in the Common Agricultural Policy. The project will contribute to safeguarding the precious biodiversity in calcareous grasslands, their interactions and functions and promote resilient ecosystems in European cultural landscapes. InterRest is a Biodiversa project where we collaborate with scientists from Germany, Spain, Belgium, Sweden and Netherlands.

Project participants: Aveliina Helm, Tsipe Aavik, Triin Reitalu, Elisabeth Prangel, Elvi Liiv

Funding: Estonian Research Council

See also the project's official website and the project description in ETIS

26.10.2021

Country-wide assessment and mapping of the economic value of ecosystem services provided by Estonian terrestrial ecosystems

Duration: 2021 july- 2023 january

The project develops a conceptual basis and methodology for economic valuation of nature's contributions to people (ecosystem services) provided by Estonian terrestrial ecosystems (forests, wetlands, grasslands, agricultural ecosystems). Indicators of economic value will be developed for selected ecosystem services, and spatially detailed assessment will be carried out for chosen protected areas and country-wide. The project will provide indicators and maps needed to value nature's contributions to people and integrate ecosystems and their services into decision-making in Estonia.

Project participants: Aveliina Helm, Elisabeth Prangel, Elvi Liiv

Funding: Estonian Environment Agency

17.06.2021

Experience of European countries in financial evaluation of terrestrial ecosystem services

Duration: 2021 april - 2021 september

The aim of the work is to analyse experiences of financial evaluation of ecosystem services in other European countries, to give an overview of the used methodological approaches, results, conclusions and the possible application of these methodologies in Estonia. The results of the work will be used in the development of the field of financial evaluation of ecosystem services within the framework of the ELME project.

Project participants: Aveliina Helm, Elisabeth Prangel, Elvi Liiv

Funding: Environment Agency

08.04.2021

Implementing citizen science to explore grassland ecology

Duration: 2021

The loss of traditionally managed diverse grasslands throughout Europe threatens the survival of many species. The proposed project will (1) raise awareness in the society about the impacts of grassland loss on biodiversity and (2) will improve scientific knowledge of the effects of grassland loss on important ecological processes. A citizen-science campaign carried out in the spring of 2021 simultaneously all across Europe will form the backbone of the project. The campaign will focus on reporting the frequency of flower types of a common grassland species, cowslip (Primula veris). Different cowslip individuals can have one of two different types of flowers (“heterostyly”). Cowslips with different flower types usually occur at equal frequencies, but grassland loss may cause strong deviations in these patterns with negative consequences for cowslips’ viability. Pilot campaigns carried out in Estonia in 2019 and 2020 (see www.cowslip.science) proved to be a great success with numerous participants and exciting scientific findings. The latter encourages expanding the geographic scope of the study towards other European regions, where the preferred habitat of cowslips (i.e. semi-natural grasslands) has once been common. The results of the project will be communicated to public, conservation practitioners and scientific audience throughout 2021.

Project participants: Tsipe Aavik, Kertu Hool, Marianne Kaldra, Iris Reinula

Funding: This project of the Baltic-German University Liaison Office is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic Germany.

Activities:

Campaign's web page: cowslip.science.

See also the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages of the campaign.

Participants from 30 countries made 3427 observations of 393 422 flowers and took 6 897 photos. More info about the first results can be found here and here.

More videos of the campaign can be found here.

20.01.2020

CELSA project: Linking genetic diversity and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities of host plant

Duration: 2019-2020

Increasing land-use intensity across Europe has brought along the loss of many natural habitats and a rapid decrease in biodiversity. There is an urgent need for solutions to alleviate these negative effects, and the restoration of degraded habitats is the key to halting further biodiversity loss. The restoration of self-sustainable plant populations is critical for successful habitat restoration. Two of the most important bottlenecks in this context are (i) the generally low genetic diversity of restored plant populations, and (ii) the lack of suitable soil fungi. First, because plant populations colonizing newly restored habitats are often small and generally originate from few source populations, their population genetic diversity is low, resulting in reduced fitness due to inbreeding and genetic drift. Second, many plant species depend on the presence of beneficial soil fungi, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which can improve plant nutrition and protection from pathogens. Lack of such fungi in restored habitats can therefore impose a significant hurdle in the process of ecological restoration. However, it is not currently known, how both of these factors, i.e. plant genetic diversity and AM fungi, interact with each other and affect the effectiveness of ecological restoration. The results of this project will be an overview about the existing knowledge of the problem, results of the experimental study with Campanula rotundifolia as the host plant and practical guidelines to restore self-sustainable plant populations. This project is done in collaboration with Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and our colleagues from plant ecology workgroup in the University of Tartu.

Project participants: Aveliina Helm, Tsipe Aavik

Funding: University of Tartu and Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven)

Uudiste arhiiv

Improving the Functional Connectivity of Grassland Networks for Plant-Pollinator Interactions (FuncNet)

Improving the Functional Connectivity of Grassland Networks for Plant-Pollinator Interactions (FuncNet)

Restoring and promoting a long term sustainable management of Fennoscandian wooded meadows in Estonia and Latvia (WOODMEADOWLIFE)

Restoring and promoting a long term sustainable management of Fennoscandian wooded meadows in Estonia and Latvia (WOODMEADOWLIFE)

Interactive effects of local and landscape scale restoration of semi-natural grasslands and agricultural fields on species interactions and ecosystem functions (InterRest)

Interactive effects of local and landscape scale restoration of semi-natural grasslands and agricultural fields on species interactions and ecosystem functions (InterRest)

Country-wide assessment and mapping of the economic value of ecosystem services provided by Estonian terrestrial ecosystems

Country-wide assessment and mapping of the economic value of ecosystem services provided by Estonian terrestrial ecosystems

Experience of European countries in financial evaluation of terrestrial ecosystem services

Experience of European countries in financial evaluation of terrestrial ecosystem services

Implementing citizen science to explore grassland ecology

Implementing citizen science to explore grassland ecology

CELSA project: Linking genetic diversity and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities of host plant

CELSA project: Linking genetic diversity and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities of host plant

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