Postdoctoral researcher
Spatial scaling of biodiversity and and ecosystem functions in rainforest transformation landscapes
Tel + 49 (0)711 / 459-23505
zheng.zhou@uni-hohenheim.de
Research Interests
- Multidiversity and multifunctionality
- Landscape ecology
- Food webs
- Soil and aquatic ecology
Agricultural expansion is among the main threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functions of tropical ecosystems. For instance, in Sumatra, Indonesia, a global hotspot of biodiversity, where rainforests and agroforests have been largely replaced by intensively managed plantations over the last decade. Therefore, the EFForTS project (CRC 990) was launched to investigate the ecological and socio-economic effects of such transformation.
My PhD project is a part of EFForTS. During my PhD at the University of Göttingen, I studied how soil food web and functions change under tropical land use from the perspectives of functional diversity, basal resources and trophic niche breadth.
For my post-doctoral project here at the University of Hohenheim, I focus on the spatial scaling of biodiversity and ecosystem functions in rainforest transformation landscapes by synthesizing the ecological and economic data from EFForTS Landscape Assessment (EFForTS-LA), which covers 124 study sites and hundreds of smallholder households. I mainly focus on 1) determining how land use at local and landscape scales affects multidiversity and multifunctionality in rainforest and plantations; 2) predicting variation in biodiversity and ecosystem functions from airborne LiDAR data; 3) relating alpha, beta, and gamma diversity to environmental variation and land use; 4) coordinate bird studies in a long-term oil palm restoration experiment and 5) collaborate with economists and modellers to identify landscapes that provide high multifunctionality and mitigate trade-offs between socioeconomic and ecological goods.
Research experience
Since 2024 Postdoc, with Prof. Ingo Grass, University of Hohenheim
2024 PhD in biology, summa cum laude
2020 - 2024 PhD studies, with Prof. Anton Potapov and Prof. Stefan Scheu, University of Göttingen
2017 - 2020 Master studies of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Publications
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zheng-Zhou-69
Zheng Zhou, Jing-Zhong Lu, Jooris Preiser, Rahayu Widyastuti, Stefan Scheu, Anton Potapov. (2023) Plant roots fuel tropical soil animal communities. Ecology Letters
Zheng Zhou, Valentyna Krashevska, Rahayu Widyastuti, Stefan Scheu, Anton Potapov (2022) Tropical land use alters functional diversity of soil food webs and leads to monopolization of the detrital energy channel. eLife
Zheng Zhou, Jing-Zhong Lu, Rahayu Widyastuti, Stefan Scheu, Anton Potapov, Valentyna Krashevska. (2024) Plant roots are more strongly linked to microorganisms in leaf litter rather than in soil across tropical land-use systems. Soil Biology and Biochemistry
Peng Zhang, Zheng Zhou, Weixin Liu, Donghui Wu, Stefan Scheu. (2024) Detritivores maintain stoichiometric homeostasis, but alter body size and population density in response to altitude induced stoichiometric mismatches. Geoderma
Xue Pan, Zhijing Xie, Zheng Zhou, Xin Sun, Dong Liu, Donghui Wu, Stefan Scheu, Mark Maraun. (2023) Variations in trophic niches of soil microarthropods with elevation in two distant mountain regions in Eurasia as indicated by stable isotopes (15N, 13C). Soil Biology and Biochemistry
Zheng Zhou, Wu-Juan Mi, Yuan-Zhao Xu, Qing-Yang Song, Yong-Hong Bi. (2020) Feeding habits of Procambarus clarkia and food web structure in two different aquaculture systems. Acta Hydrobiologica Sinica (In Chinese with English abstract)
Zheng Zhou, Yubo Huang, Binliang Wang, Wu-Juan Mi, Qing-Yang Song, Yuan-Zhao Xu, Yong-Hong Bi. (2020) The analysis of food web structure in the area in front of the Three Gorges Dam using the stable isotope technology. Ecological Science (In Chinese with English abstract)
