06.08.2025
On May 21st, 2025, Benito Schöpke successfully defended his dissertation on the topic of "Ecological boundaries between crop fields & dry grasslands: Small-scale patterns of plant diversity" in the scientific discipline of Plant Ecology at the University of Potsdam.
The research was carried out under the main supervision of Prof. Monika Wulf, who led the former ZALF research group “Biotic Interactions between Forest and Agricultural Land (IFA)”.
His study examined how plant species composition changes along the transition from intensively farmed fields to species-rich dry grasslands in two German regions. He found that agricultural practices can influence plant diversity deep into neighbouring grasslands, with organic fields generally supporting higher species richness than conventional ones. Moreover, the boundary zones themselves proved to be hotspots of biodiversity, containing unique combinations of species that contribute significantly to the overall diversity of the landscape. Congratulations on this achievement!
