‘Cultural override’ is a phenomenon typical of humans in which we seek out resources based on cultural preference regardless of availability. Sometimes this can be a constraint on behavior, when readily-available ...

Islands contribute enormously to global biodiversity, but are threatened by human activities. To understand why some islands have been more impacted since first human settlement than others, a new study compared ...

A large national consortium of marine scientists and oceanographers, including the University of Amsterdam, has received a major grant for the necessary replacement of the national marine research facilities. Both ...

An organized overview of all multicellular flora and fauna in the Netherlands and the infrastructure to identify them semi-automatically. This is what the ARISE megaproject wants to achieve in five to ten years’ ...

How can we best protect the Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems? Long-term ecosystem restoration strategies should be looking more closely at the complexity of ecosystems, including species interactions and ...

In the new issue of Science, an international team of biologists, led by Franciska de Vries of the University of Amsterdam, urges the scientific community to spend more time researching the interaction of food crops ...

Even a small loss of large-bodied animal species in tropical forests can have severe consequences for ecosystems. This is the conclusion from a simulation study using several empirical interaction networks of plants ...

A new research project will study how non-inversion tillage contributes to a healthy soil and the nutritional value of cauliflower. IBED researchers Elly Morriën and Erik Cammeraat went into the field this week to ...

Researchers from Utrecht University, Wageningen University and the University of Amsterdam have analysed microplastics and rubbers in Dutch rivers the Dommel, the Maas and Dutch sewage treatment plants in a precise ...

New research has revealed that thousands of renewable energy facilities are located within globally important biodiversity areas - degrading habitats and threatening species. The international research team, ...

During the last decade, there has been a strong discussion about the principles of organic farming, driven primarily by the differences in organic production systems in Europe. Some systems are highly intensified and ...

The evolution of colour vision might be closely linked to the availability of food. Researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), found that ...

Scientists from the University of Amsterdam are warning that problems with toxic cyanobacteria are likely to increase in the future. In an article in the journal Science Advances, they show that a common ...

Thirteen talented UvA researchers have been awarded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships to conduct their research. The fellowships are personal grants, which range from around €175,000 to €280,000 euros for ...

Small changes in the environmental conditions of biological communities that have only minor immediate effects, may, after a substantial delay, cause dramatic shifts in these communities by triggering evolutionary ...

Over a million people in the Netherlands use psychopharmaca, like anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. After use residues enter surface waters via the sewage, where they are known to affect aquatic organisms. A ...

On Thursday 12 December 2019 Professor Annemarie van Wezel, Scientific Director of the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) and named Professor of Environmental Ecology, delivered her inaugural ...

Blue whales are the largest animals ever to have lived on our planet. But why did blue whales and their close relatives, the baleen whales, evolve to be so huge while other animals did not? An international ...

Did you know that one of the most abundant marine food sources is invisible, like sugar dissolved in a cup of tea? However, not many organisms can efficiently feed on dissolved organic matter (DOM). Sponges and ...

On Friday 29 November Professor Linda Amaral-Zettler, named Professor by Special Appointment of Marine Microbiology, delivered her inaugural lecture "Trouble on the High Seas: From Microplastics to Macroalgae". This ...