Visiting scientist: José Javier Jiménez Albarral from SERIDA, Spain joins us as a visiting PhD student to collaborate on bird studies. He recently presented "Birds and bats' ecosystem services-disservices trade-offs in fruit orchards" at our seminar. April 2025. 

Event: Edina co-organized Sustainability Theme Days at the National Botanical Garden, engaging pupils with games and discussions on sustainable farming, gardening, and consumer habits to inspire awareness in everyday life. April 2025. 

Editorial appointment: Péter has been appointed as a subject editor for Evidence Synthesis & Meta-Analysis at Basic and Applied Ecology, the journal of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. April 2025. 

Publication: Our paper, led by Edina, has been published in Basic and Applied Ecology with the title: Invasive common milkweed strongly simplifies insect flower-visiting networks. Our research reveals the indirect effects of plant invasion through network analysis. April 2025. 

Monograph: Data on the natural habitats of the Southern Great Hungarian Plain, published over the last two decades, have been collected by Niki and Robi. In nearly 400 pages, the work organises the occurrence data of 439 spider species, the number of individuals collected and summarises new regional data, new species in the fauna of Hungary and new to science. March 2025. 

Publication: Our paper, led by Robi, has been published in Neobiota with the title: „Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) invasion, forest-steppe fragment size and isolation jointly constrain arthropod communities and their functional traits”. Here, we showed that habitat fragmentation may modify the effect plant invasion on arthropods. March 2025. 

Election: Péter has been elected as a member of the General Assembly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), and thereby, he is also a member of the Ecology Committee of the HAS. March 2025. 

New group member: We would welcome Aline Brosch as a PhD student at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences to our group supervised by Christina Fischer and Péter. Happy sciencing! February 2025. 

Publication: Péter co-authored a paper in Journal of Ecology, "Decline in Plant Species Richness with Chronic Decrease of Precipitation: Role of Dominant Species." Results show species richness becomes more sensitive to precipitation changes after extreme drought events. February 2025. 

Publication: Riho's co-authored article has been published in the Methods in Ecology and Evolution with the title: "An integrative framework to combine migratory connectivity and demographic data". We showed that the sharing of information between migratory connectivity and population data improved the estimation of demographic parameters by the population model and improved connectivity parameter estimates when data were scarce. February 2025. 

Social media: Due to Twitter's shift towards polarization, hate, and agitation, our group is moving to Bluesky. Thank you for following us on Twitter; we encourage you to join us on Bluesky for updates. January 2025. 

Publication: Dávid's paper has been published in Global Ecology and Conservation with the title: "Sap-feeding insects do not respond uniformly to urbanization: The role of urban green spaces and species characteristics." Here, we showed that native and specialist hemipterans are mostly restricted to less densely built areas, while exotic species, some of which are invasive pests and can cause nuisance problems, reach high densities at intermediate levels of urbanization with a relatively high proportion of gardens and parks in the landscape. January 2025. 

Publication: Péter has published a paper in Current Forestry Reports with the title: "Responses of tropical tree seedlings to nutrient addition: a meta‑analysis to understand future changes in tropical forest dynamics". We found that nutrient addition in tropical tree seedlings boosts shoot biomass and growth rates, potentially leading to changes in community composition and forest structure due to human-induced nutrient deposition. January 2025. 

Publication: Kitti, Robi, Péter together with Jean-Yves Humbert has published a paper in Global Ecology and Conservation with the title: "Effects of uncut refuge management on grassland arthropods – A systematic review". We found that creating uncut refuges in mowed grasslands generally supports higher arthropod abundance and species richness, though the effectiveness can vary depending on factors such as refuge shape, size, and the study's methodology. January 2025.