Associated Projects

Many successful collaborations have already been established in partnership with PhenObs.

PhenObs@Herbaria – Looking Into the Past

In 2025, we launched the PhenObs@Herbaria project in close collaboration with the SIP (Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function). The aim is to establish, in a similar way to PhenObs, a network of herbaria that extract phenology and traits from physical specimens in order to gain an insight into the past whilst to ensure extensive geographical coverage. We are currently working on developing and testing an observation protocol.

People involved:
Solveig Franziska Bucher (SIP, Jena)
Josephine Ulrich (SIP, Jena)
Christine Römermann (FSU, Jena)
Robert Rauschkolb (FSU, Jena)
Isabell Hensen (MLU, Halle)
Christoph Rosche (MLU, Halle)
Markus Lehnert (Herbaria MLU Halle)
Gerald Parolly (Herbaria Botanical Garden Berlin)
Juray Paule (Herbaria Botanical Garden Berlin)
Alexandra Müllner-Riehl (Herbaria Leipzig University)
Christiane Ritz (Herbaria Görlitz)
Natalie Ahlstrand (Herbaria Copenhagen)
Franziska Merle Willems (Phillips-University Marburg)

PhenObs@Tropics – Extending the PhenObs Network

To date, the geographical focus of the botanical gardens participating in PhenObs has been on the Northern Hemisphere and encompasses temperate regions. We are currently working with partners from tropical regions to further develop PhenObs into a global network. As a first step, we are currently conducting pilot studies in tropical regions to test whether the PhenObs protocol can be applied. We will then revise the protocol accordingly and encourage as many botanical gardens in tropical regions as possible to take part in the project.

People involved:
Robert Rauschkolb (FSU, Jena)
Christine Römermann (FSU, Jena)
Isabell Hensen (MLU, Halle)
Silvia Gallegos Ayala (Santiago de Chirca Biological Station, La Paz, Bolivia)
Dayana Sanchez (Jardin Botanico de Bogota, Columbia)
Michael Calamaro (CBCREEC, Philippines)
Jaishanker Nair (Digital University Kerala, India)
Athira Kakkara (Digital University Kerala, India)

FRESH 2.0 – Studying Frost Resistance

In the DFG-funded Project FRESH 2.0, we are collaborating with colleagues who are making use of the botanical gardens participating in the PhenObs network to investigate the frost resistance of perennial herbaceous species in relation to their phenology.

People involved:

Solveig Franziska Bucher (SIP, Jena)
Therese Ziegler (FSU, Jena)

idiv-Plants frozen in winter in front of a blue sky

Therese Ziegler

Plant Hub – Contributing to a Biodiverstiy Data Base

The iDiv support unit “PlantHub” aims to present biodiversity data in all its facets, to use and expose open-access data in the biodiversity/ecology domain, to increase interoperability among projects and with external databases, and to host workflows to access, pre-process, and analyse data from iDiv and partner institutions. In addition to data from PhenObs, data from other projects as TRY, sMon and GloNAF can be explored there.

Have a look!

Finished Cooperations

PflanzeKlimaKultur! – A Citizen Science Project

In the joint project “PflanzeKlimaKultur!“, scientists from the Botanical Garden Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin) and the iDiv at the University of Jena investigated the influence of urban climatic conditions on the growth phases of plants together with citizens in Berlin, Halle, Jena and Leipzig. To this end, citizens established beds in their gardens planted with the same perennial herbaceous species and recorded the phenology on a weekly basis, following the PhenObs protocol.

Get some insights into the results!

Making a Change! – Working With Schools

Observing phenological processes offers a valuable opportunity to make climate change and its consequences visible and tangible. It was precisely these questions that the pupils explored over an extended period. They carried out their own observations and, over the course of a school year, collected data on specific plants in their local area. In doing so, they collaborated with experts from the University of Vienna and the Vienna Botanical Garden and learnt about their scientific work in connection with PhenObs.

iCyt – Pollen Analysis

The iDiv support unit called “iCyt” (“integrative Cytomics”) measures cells in suspension independent of their origin (water, soil or air samples of plant, animal or human origin). Their unique methods to measure individual particles in powerful combination with deep-learning algorithms enabled us to investigate pollen traits within the PhenObs network.

Plos, C., Hornick, T., Dunker, S., Sporbert, M., Jakubka, D., Nordt, B., Lenk, A., Walther, F., Hensen, I., Römermann, C. (2026) Interspecific phenological variation in herbaceous species is more strongly reflected in vegetative traits than in floral traits. Journal of Ecology, e70370. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.70370.

Walter, F., Hofmann, M., Rakosy, D., Plos, C., Deilmann, T.J., Lenk, A., Römermann, C., Harpole, W.S., Hornick, T., Dunker, S., (2025) Multispectral Imaging Flow Cytometry for Spatio-Temporal Pollen Trait Variation Measurements of Insect-Pollinated Plants. Cytometry, 107: 293-308. https://doi.org/10.1002/cyto.a.24932

PollObs – Pollinator Observations within PhenObs

Together with colleagues from the iDiv, especially the working group “Species Interaction Ecology” (Professor Tiffany Knight), we established the project “PollObs”. The aim of “PollObs” was to study the role of flowering times and functional traits on plant-pollinator interactions. To answer these questions, we used data from field observations in the botanical gardens in Jena, Halle and Leipzig.

Lanuza, J.B.,…, Hensen, I., Rauschkolb, R., Römermann, C., Schweiger, O., Knight T. (2026) Seasonal Variation Mediates the Importance of Species Attributes in Plant-Pollinator Interactions. Pre-Print. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.70370

idiv-Distelblüte mit Hummel am Strand in Nonnevitz

Mixed Bed Experiment -Studying Intraspecific Variation

In PhenObs, each species is recorded only once per botanical garden. To gain insights into the intraspecific variability of traits and phenology within a single garden, and to compare this with other gardens, replicate common gardens featuring 10 species were established in Berlin, Halle, Jena, Leipzig and Vienna in 2019 and monitored until 2023.

Rauschkolb, R., Dietrich, V., Knickmann, B., Nordt, B., Freiberg, M., Hensen, I., Meier, T., Lang, I., Wenk, J.K., Krause, L., Römermann, C. (2026) Above- and Belowground Traits are Linked Within Species, but Vary Differently Along Environmental Gradients. Ecology and Evolution, e74109. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.74109.

Isabell Hensen

ABBE – Investigating Root-Phenology

With the financial support of an iDiv flexpool support fund (10k €), we established a common garden experiment involving two perennial herbaceous species and microrhizotrons at the Botanical Garden in Jena between 2025 and 2026. Every two weeks, using scanners provided by the Eisenhauer (University of Leipzig) and Weigelt University of Leipzig) Labs, we monitored the phenological development in the root zone within the underground tubes and then correlated this with above-ground phenology.

idiv-In an experimental plot, a scanner is lowered into a mini-rhizotron to carry out a 360° scan of the root zone.

Oskar Senneke

GCEF – Phenology in Relation to Land Use

The PhenObs project examines the phenology of perennial herbaceous plants, with a particular focus on their response to climatic conditions. In order to broaden the research focus to include the effects of land use, we established a collaboration in 2020 with the GCEF (a large-scale field experiment to investigate the consequences of climate and land-use change) and carried out phenological observations and trait measurements at these experimental plots.

Plos, C., Hensen, I., Korell, L., Auge, H., Römermann, C. (2024) Plant species phenology differs between climate and land-use scenarios and relates to plant functional traits. Ecology and Evolution, 14, e11441. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.11441.