Best Poster Award at the Third VDSEE Symposium
At the VDSEE Symposium 2026, I presented a poster on habitat niche breadth expansion in European alien plants and received the Best Poster award.
The VDSEE Symposium 2026, organised by the Vienna Doctoral School of Ecology and Evolution, took place on 27 February 2026 at the University of Vienna’s Biology Building. Now in its third year, the symposium brought together PhD candidates from across ecology and evolution for a day of oral and poster presentations, two keynote lectures, and the Art & Science exhibition held the evening before.
Audience during the symposium talks
Johannes Hausharter presenting on mountaintop thermophilization
Symposium Highlights
The programme featured keynotes by Tobias Uller and Samantha Brown, followed by twelve oral presentations spanning topics from symbiosis and bat conservation to alpine plant futures and microbial ecology. The poster session showcased twenty contributions, and the day concluded with an awards ceremony. Johannes Hausharter, from Stefan Dullinger’s group, gave a talk on widespread thermophilization in Europe’s mountaintop vegetation.
The evening before the symposium, the Art & Science exhibition took place in the UBB cafeteria, where I exhibited four algorithmic artworks under the title Terminal Landscapes.
Giving the poster pitch presentation
Group photo of all symposium participants
My Poster: Tracking Habitat Associations of European Neophytes
Receiving the Best Poster Presentation award
I presented Poster 4, titled "Tracking habitat associations of European neophytes across residence time", co-authored with Franz Essl and Stefan Dullinger. The poster addressed how residence time shapes the habitat associations of European neophytes, drawing on 835,891 vegetation plots from the European Vegetation Archive spanning nine decades across 56 countries.
Using a hurdle negative binomial model, I examined how residence time influences both the probability and magnitude of neophyte overrepresentation across 18 EUNIS habitat types. Man-made and ruderal habitats showed the highest overrepresentation, increasing from 20% (0–20 years residence) to 44% (>200 years). Species established for over 200 years had a 3.4-fold higher probability of occupying multiple habitats compared to recent arrivals, with expected habitat counts rising from 1.2 to 2.0.
Habitat transition analysis revealed predictable colonisation pathways, with anthropogenic habitats as primary entry points. These findings quantify substantial invasion debt: many established neophytes have not yet reached equilibrium with available habitats.
For more details about the symposium, see the official programme booklet.
Downloads
Booklet (PDF)