SDG 15: Life on land

Winter moths are rapidly adapting to a changing environment. Nathalie van Dis studied this adaptibility in her PhD.

The winter moth has genetically changed its egg development, which has slowed its response to temperature changes. This results in a better match between egg hatching date and critical food availability. There are several drivers that underly the rate of adaptation in the winter moth, such as a high genetic variation and large population sizes. Van Dis also proposes that genes involved in sensing and signalling environmental changes are important for climate change adaptation. These findings can help determine which insect populations are being threathened with extinction by climate change. Her full dissertation can be found here.

This research is part of the Adaptive Life programme , which aims to increase the understanding of adaptibility of living systems by combining short-term and long-term evolutionary responses.

Urban and rural environments differ in many ways: the amount of light, food availability, disturbance levels, temperature, etc. Professor Martine Maan wants to know what the impact of urbanization is on animal species, such as spiders. Together with CurioUs, a citizen science project was set up, where people measured spiders in urban and rural settings.

Martine Maan explains why this study is important: 'The underlying question is whether and how plants and animals adapt to city life, and how quickly they are able to do this. Is it a matter of individual flexibility, or is evolution taking place? In other words, are changes in the genetic material being passed from generation to generation? These questions are interesting because they give insight into the impact of urbanization on other species living on our planet.'

True darkness is becoming rare - especially in a densely populated country like the Netherlands. Light pollution can disrupt natural patterns of living creatures, including us humans. In the North of the Netherlands, we are lucky to still have true dark places, such as the Lauwersmeer Natural Park. It is one of 40 Dark Sky Parks in Europe that are protected from light pollution and where visitors are welcome to experience the darkness at night.

A new telescope has recently been placed in this area, that is used by the Kapteyn institute and astronomy students. The telescope also has a weelchair-accessible observation platform, so visitors will have a place to look up at the starry sky as well. At the Lauwersnest Activity Centre, special attention will be paid to the darkness of the area.

Light pollution at Zernike campus is also being studied. For example, in 2022 there was a hackathon that aimed to find innovative solutions to the increasing light pollution at Zernike.

A study, that included researchers from the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), found that it would take 3 million years to recover the number of species that went extinct due to humans on Madagascar. However, if currently threatened species on Madagascar go extinct, recovering them would take more than 20 million years, much longer than what has previously been found on any other island.

From unique baobab species to lemurs, the island of Madagascar is one of the world’s most important hotspots of biodiversity. Approximately 90% of its species of plants and animals are found nowhere else. Unlike most islands, Madagascar’s fauna is still relatively intact, but many species are now threatened with extiction. However, the study finds that with adequate conservation action we may still preserve over 20 million years of unique evolutionary history on the island.

Allowing the carcasses of dead deer to remain in the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve has a positive effect on biodiversity in the area. Not only do the carcasses attract many more insects and other arthropods in the short term – but also in the long term, due to increased plant growth. Plants located near animal carcasses became five times bigger than usual, leading to a surge in the number of plant-eating invertebrates on the plants and, therefore, also in the number of their predators.

This is the conclusion of a study conducted by researcher Dr Roel van Klink, which was conducted before the number of large grazers was drastically reduced in connection with updated nature management policy.

The wolf has returned, but humans are also responsible for a ‘landscape of fear’ in nature reserves. Deer are avoiding recreational areas during the day, both at the landscape scale and in the proximity of recreational trails. At the landscape scale in particular, this results in the decreased consumption of saplings, which is beneficial for forest regeneration. The effects are strongest in open landscapes such as heathland, where visibility is greatest. This is the conclusion of a recently published study carried out by Bjorn Mols, who conducted his research shortly before wolves appeared in the Veluwe.

BirdEyes views the world - and the Waddensea - through the eyes of birds. For example: red knots and bar-tailed godwits can show us how climate change is affecting their remote arctic breeding grounds.

The study focuses on threats to the Wadden region and the effectiveness of nature protection - by following six species of migratory birds. Professor Theunis Piersma explains: ‘It is inspiring to see how the birds are able to adapt. They can do this because they observe the world well.’

BirdEyes is a science and creative centre that uses information from tiny transmitters, loggers and other technology on the backs and legs of birds. By cleverly combining such data with other sources of information, and by using new ways to tell stories, BirdEyes strives to open up a new knowledge network.

Read more about the study
Listen to a podcast about BirdEyes
Visit the BirdEyes website

Reactive nitrogen compounds emitted from agriculture, traffic and industry are quickly becoming dominant air pollutants worldwide. This has severe consequences for air quality, ecosystems, and global climate. The University of Groningen is part of the CAINA project, which aims to understand the aerosol-cloud interactions under high reactive nitrogen concentrations. Professor Ulrike Dusek is the lead investigator of the project.

The CAINA project focuses on the Netherlands, where ammonia emissions from agriculture combine with NOx from industry and traffic result in high concentrations of ammonium nitrate. These regularly exceed concentrations of sulfates, the main air pollutants in most other regions, by a factor of 5 or more. This makes the Netherlands ideal for understanding the chemistry of the future global atmosphere.  

Jeroen Onrust studies earth worms. Why? Because by digging through the soil, they aerate it so that plants can better spread their roots and rainwater can be absorbed faster. And at night, they creep up to the surface to look for dead plant remains that they can take back down into the earth, where they are broken down so plants can grow better. Earthworms themselves are also food for all sorts of other animals, such as lapwings, hedgehogs, blackbirds, and moles. One of Onrust's findings is that bigger worms are found on farming land that is less disturbed (e.g. no ploughing or manure injection).

He gets help from people all over the Netherlands in his research, because they help him count worms during the National Worm Count (part of CurioUs? ). In 2022, a total of 7,692 worms were counted by 604 participants.

Due to climate change, sea level rise and subsidence, the salinization of the inland dike lands along the Dutch coast, but also in other deltas, is gradually increasing. As a result, the available amount of freshwater decreases. Salinization also makes ground and surface water less suitable for many users and leads to damage to agricultural crops, thereby threatening food production.

Three knowledge institutes (one of which is the UG) and three universities of applied sciences are therefore joining forces in the Institute for Agriculture in Salinizing Deltas, with the aim of learning to use the available freshwater sparingly and smartly and to make our agricultural system salinization-proof.