Our researchIs centred at the crossroads of Invasion Science, Macroecology, Biogeography and Conservation Biology, with a strong focus on human-environment interactions.
Invasive Reynoutria japonica in Austria
Our division
CollaborationsWe are committed to a inter-disciplinary, open-minded research culture complemented by active international exchange..
Jennifer Hennenfeind, a PhD student from our group, has just spent the summer at IIASA answering this question. Every summer since 1977, around 50 PhD...
Franz Essl wrote a commentary piece on why the extreme heat and drought wave that has hit Austria in the last months also offers opportunities for national...
A new study led by Anna Schertler and an international team of experts on fungal and plant invasions has just been published in New Phytologist. The study...
Long-term vegetation study through resurveys is essential for quantifying how biodiversity changes over time. The accuracy of resurvey data is influenced...
The Stefan M. Gergely Prizes and Fellowships of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) were awarded in 2026 to two researchers and three journalists. One of...
Species loss is accelerating and has surpassed historic extinction rates. But how well do we actually capture extinctions and do we know how many species...
Biodiversity and languages are threatened worldwide. The IPBES Global Assessment estimates around 1 Mio. species at risk of extinction and the same holds...
In April 2026, Franz Essl has been invited to join the European Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea. Academia Europaea is an interdisciplinary scientific...
On the 18th of December, Tom Vorstenbosch defended his thesis “Modelling biological invasions in the sub-Antarctic under climate change”, supervised by...
Latest Publications
Ciarle R., Vaishnav T., Bosher G., & Mologni F. (2026). Integrating functional and trait-based models to explain seed size variation on islands in the New Zealand region. Evolutionary Journal Of The Linnean Society, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/evolinnean/kzag007
Hagr E. A. A., Mohammed E. M. I., Gadallah N. A. H., Hassan T. T., & Omer A. (2026). Dynamics of ecosystem service values under land cover change in the Dinder semi-arid biosphere reserve, Sudan. Ecological Indicators, 185, 114821. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ECOLIND.2026.114821
Dawson W., Blumenthal D., Čuda J., Duncan R. P., Frohlich D., Hejda M., et al. (2026). Cross-border colonists : How naturalised species reshape prairies, Pampas, and savannas. Routledge Handbook Of Grasslands, 232-248. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003394969-18