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Research team uncovers global centers of evolutionarily unique and endemic plants. Understanding the origins and preservation of biodiversity is crucial as human impact continues to threaten our planet's rich variety of life. Often overlooked, narrow-ranged and evolutionary unique species play a vital role in shaping biodiversity.

The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the rest of the world. This phenomenon is known as Arctic amplification. To understand this warming, the DFG-funded Transregional Collaborative Research Centre (AC)³ was established in 2016. It includes modelling and data analysis efforts as well as observational elements.

Research team led by Göttingen University compares form and function of island and mainland plants Oceanic islands provide useful models for ecology, biogeography and evolutionary research. Many ground-breaking findings - including Darwin's theory of evolution - have emerged from the study of species on islands and their interplay with their living and non-living environment.

Expedition with Bonn participation investigates carbon dioxide binding by weathering on the seafloor The Belgian research vessel RV Belgica is currently underway in the waters of Iceland. Two researchers from the University of Bonn are also on board. The goal of the mission is to better understand a natural thermostat of the Earth: the weathering of rocks at the bottom of the sea.

Researchers from Freie Universität Berlin have discovered phosphorus in the subsurface ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system has just taken a giant leap forward. A team of researchers led by Professor Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at Freie Universität Berlin, has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life.

Archaea cultivated in the laboratory are active even at high temperatures and without oxygen The seafloor is home to around one-third of all the microorganisms on the Earth and is inhabited even at a depth of several kilometers. Only when it becomes too hot does the abundance of microorganisms appear to decline.

Approximately 700,000 years ago, a "warm ice age" permanently changed the climate cycles on Earth. Contemporaneous with this exceptionally warm and moist period, the polar glaciers greatly expanded. A European research team including Earth scientists from Heidelberg University used recently acquired geological data in combination with computer simulations to identify this seemingly paradoxical connection.

If there were ever a prize for the longest journey to work, the Jena University team led by Christina Braun would stand a good chance of winning it. To reach their research area, the polar ornithologist and her team travel some 14,000 kilometres - as the crow flies - each time. Their destination is the Fildes Peninsula on King George Island in the Antarctic.

Heidelberg geoscientists study natural climate fluctuations of the past 500,000 years With the aim of predicting the consequences of man-made climate change for Mediterranean ecosystems, geoscientists at Heidelberg University have studied natural climate and vegetation fluctuations over the past 500,000 years.

Heidelberg Earth scientists study natural climate fluctuations of the past 500,000 years With a view towards predicting the consequences of human-made climate change for Mediterranean ecosystems, Earth scientists from Heidelberg University have studied natural climate and vegetation fluctuations of the past 500,000 years.

Heidelberg geoscientists develop new methods to identify biogenic carbon in zircon minerals Zircon crystals, like a time capsule, can preserve traces of life hundreds of millions of years old in the form of biogenic carbon. Using new methods, geoscientists at Heidelberg University have succeeded in tracing very old and rare examples of the mineral zircon that host graphite inclusions in which light carbon is identifiable as a remnant of earlier life.

Heidelberg research team uses laser scanning and 3D drone data to study an ice-debris mixture in Tyrol A rock glacier in Tyrol - a downward flowing ice-debris mixture covering more than 40 hectares - is becoming unstable due to rising temperatures and is accelerating towards the valley. A research team from Heidelberg University is involved in the study of the rock glacier "Äußeres Hochebenkar" in the Ötztal Alps of Austria.

Heidelberg environmental physicists study dry regions and their influence on variations in the global carbon cycle End-of-dry-season CO2 pulses recur each year in the atmosphere above the Australian continent, a discovery made by an international research team led by environmental physicist André Butz of Heidelberg University.

Convection of salty water creates hexagonal patterns The honeycomb-like patterns that often occur in salt deserts, including Death Valley and Chile, look like something from another world. A team that included researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany, explain the origin of the mysterious patterns for the first time.

Team headed by Freiburg researcher has discovered earliest use of steel in Europe - on Iberian stone pillars from the Final Bronze Age A study by an international and interdisciplinary team headed by Freiburg archaeologist Dr. Ralph Araque Gonzalez from the Faculty of Humanities has proven that steel tools were already in use in Europe around 2900 years ago.

They are called giant hogweed, Japanese knotweed or ragweed - but they all have one thing in common: they are invasive plant species that found their way to Germany many years ago and are increasingly displacing other plant species. Many of them have not even reached their potentially suitable habitat yet.

New astronomical measurements in the infrared range have led to the identification of a heretofore unknown class of asteroids. An international research team including geoscientists from Heidelberg University has succeeded in characterising these small planets using infrared spectroscopy. They are located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and are - similar to the dwarf planet Ceres - rich in water.

Glaciers in high mountains can dam lakes, some of which burst out suddenly, posing a hazard to human settlements downstream. To better understand long-term changes of these floods, Dr. Georg Veh and researchers at the University of Potsdam and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have studied whether and to what extent the activity of these glacial lakes has changed in recent decades.

Freie researchers contribute to new study in "Nature" detailing evidence of unusual drought conditions in Europe in recent years Using data taken from tree-ring isotopes, researchers have proven that the summer droughts that have swept parts of Europe in recent years were actually very unusual in comparison to droughts experienced during the past centuries.

For the first time, researchers have recorded live and in atomic detail what happens to the material in an asteroid impact. The team of Falko Langenhorst from the University of Jena and Hanns-Peter Liermann from DESY simulated an asteroid impact with the mineral quartz in the lab and pursued it in slow motion in a diamond anvil cell, while monitoring it with DESY's X-ray source PETRA III.