I am a functional ecologist with a strong focus on bioacoustics and its application for biodiversity monitoring. My research investigates the ecological and behavioral mechanisms that shape biodiversity patterns and species activity in response to environmental change, aiming to mitigate further biodiversity loss and to support nature conservation.

My research focuses on functional ecology, biodiversity, and bioacoustics, including its application for biodiversity monitoring. I am particularly interested in the ecological and behavioral mechanisms that shape the distribution, activity patterns, and acoustic diversity of animal species. My work, which I have carried out in both tropical and temperate regions, explores acoustic signal adaptations as well as the effects of global environmental change drivers, in forests as well as in agricultural and urban areas on individual species and species assemblages.

My main study organisms are bats and birds. Both taxa are integral parts in almost all terrestrial ecosystems and deliver essential key roles, such as seed dispersal, predation, and in particular the acoustic diversity of bird song has been shown to positively influences human empathy towards nature. Due to flight birds and bats are considered to be very mobile organisms, however in both taxa individual species differ in aerodynamic abilities, acoustic habitat perception and resource needs. Species of both taxa also differ in sensitivity to anthropogenic habitat disturbance.

A central goal of my work is to understand which species are able to adjust to novel environmental conditions, and why. I explore how local and regional factors influence assemblage composition, and how taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity can be used to assess ecological resilience and forecast biodiversity responses to ongoing environmental or climatic changes. This includes examining how behavioral flexibility, may enable species to adjust and to tolerate novel environmental conditions. Further I am interested in the consequences of biodiversity changes and how shifts at the individual level, can scale up and affect species interactions, the extent of ecological niches, and nature contributions to people.

By combining ecological theory with applied conservation, I aim to uncover the mechanisms behind species resilience or decline, and to support the development of strategies for biodiversity and species conservation.

Current Projects:

• Effects of land use on functional traits and patterns in bird and bat communities. 
  Changes in taxonomic and functional composition of species communities in relation to local and landscape environmental factors, urban species communities
• The importance of structural vegetation heterogeneity for birds and bats in anthropogenically modified landscapes. 
  Spatial and temporal dynamics within species communities, species interactions, functional and process-based niches, human influence on and human perception of biodiversity 
  https://www.biodiversity-exploratories.de/en/projects/the-effect-of-land-use-on-functional-traits-and-patterns-in-bird-and-bat-communities/
• Life in the city - effects of urban environments on bats This project is a global collaborative project with bat scientists all over the world and led together with Dr. C. G. Threlfall, Macquarie University, Sydney
• Long-term bat monitoring as part of a cross-taxon biodiversity monitoring in the Black Forest National Park, Baden-Württemberg. Together with Dr. M. Förschler FB II (Ecological Monitoring, Research & Species Protection) of the National Park Schwarzwald.
  https://www.nationalpark-schwarzwald.de/forschen/naturwissenschaftlich
• Environmental challenges for bats in tropical systems. Together with Prof. Dr. Marco Tschapka. Ulm University, Ulm
   

PDF-Version (2025-09)

https://scholar.google.de/citations?hl=de&user=obv31VAAAAAJ

Most recent / *first or last authorship

Ewert S.P., Knörnschild M., Jung K., Frommolt K.-H. (2026). Through the magnifying glass: Untangling fine-scale foraging choices of bats between cropland and adjacent dry grassland. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 396,109941.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2025.109941

Jung, K., Schall, P., Ammer, C., & Nölke, N. (2025). Green Forests for Bats: Response to Stand-Scale Management Interventions –Results of an Experiment. Forest Ecology and Management, 595, 122971.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2025.122971

Duflot R., Heinrichs S., Balducci L., Chianucci F., Hofmeister J., Paillet Y., Trentanovi G., Archaux F., Boch S., Bouget C., Dvořák D., Fischer M., Gosselin F., Gosselin M., Gossner M. M., Holá E., Hošek J., Jung K., Palice Z., Renner S. C., Weisser W. W., Nagel T.A., Burrascano S. & Schall P., (2025) Sustainable forest planning: Assessing biodiversity effects of Triad zoning based on empirical data and virtual landscapes, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (39) e2512683122.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2512683122

Jung, K., Teuscher, M., Böhm, S., Wells, K., Ayasse, M., Fischer, M., Weisser, W. W., Renner, S. C., & Tschapka, M. (2024). Supporting bird diversity and ecological function in managed grassland and forest systems needs an integrative approach. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 12, 1401513.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2024.1401513 

*Renner, S. C., Gossner, M. M., Ayasse, M., Böhm, S., Teuscher, M., Weisser, W. W., & Jung, K. (2024). Forest structure, plants, arthropods, scale, or birds’ functional groups: What key factor are forest birds responding to? PLOS ONE, 19(5), e0304421.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304421 

Müller, S., Jahn, O., Jung, K., Mitesser, O., Ammer, C., Böhm, S., Ehbrecht, M., Farina, A., Renner, S. C., Pieretti, N., Schall, P., Tschapka, M., Wells, K., & Scherer-Lorenzen, M. (2024). Temporal dynamics of acoustic diversity in managed forests. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 12, 1392882. 
https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2024.1392882 

Fairbairn, A. J., Meyer, S. T., Mühlbauer, M., Jung, K., Apfelbeck, B., Berthon, K., Frank, A., Guthmann, L., Jokisch, J., Kerler, K., Müller, N., Obster, C., Unterbichler, M., Webersberger, J., Matejka, J., Depner, P., & Weisser, W. W. (2024). Urban biodiversity is affected by human-designed features of public squares. Nature Cities, 1(10), 706–715. 
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00126-5 

Paillet, Y., Zapponi, L., Schall, P., Monnet, J.-M., Ammer, C., Balducci, L., Boch, S., Brazaitis, G., Campanaro, A., Chianucci, F., Doerfler, I., Fischer, M., Gosselin, M., Gossner, M. M., Heilmann-Clausen, J., Hofmeister, J., Hošek, J., Jung, K., Kepfer-Rojas, S., … Burrascano, S. (2024). One to rule them all? Assessing the performance of sustainable forest management indicators against multitaxonomic data for biodiversity conservation. Biological Conservation, 300, 110874. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110874 

Neyret, M., Le Provost, G., Boesing, A. L., Schneider, F. D., Baulechner, D., Bergmann, J., De Vries, F. T., 
Fiore-Donno, A. M., Geisen, S., Goldmann, K., Merges, A., Saifutdinov, R. A., Simons, N. K., Tobias, J. A., Zaitsev, A. S., Gossner, M. M., Jung, K., Kandeler, E., Krauss, J., … Manning, P. (2024). A slow-fast trait continuum at the whole community level in relation to land-use intensification. Nature Communications, 15(1), 1251. 
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45113-5

Printz, L., & Jung, K. (2023). Urban areas in rural landscapes – the importance of green space and local architecture for bat conservation. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 1194670. 
https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2023.1194670 

Ewert, S. P., Knörnschild, M., Jung, K., & Frommolt, K.-H. (2023). Structurally rich dry grasslands – Potential stepping stones for bats in open farmland. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 995133.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2023.995133

Gärtner, S. M., del Val Alfaro, E., Birk, S., Bernauer, T., Buse, J., Dreiser, C., Jung, K., Kratzer, R., Popa, F., Weckesser, M., & Förschler, M. I. (2022). Protecting natural processes in the Black Forest National Park – integrated long-term biodiversity monitoring. Waldökologie. Landschaftsforschung und Naturschutz, 21, 15–30.
https://doi.org/urn:nbn:de:0041-afsv-02153

Jung, K., & Threlfall, C. G. (2018). Trait-dependent tolerance of bats to urbanization: A global meta-analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1885), 20181222.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.1222

Jung, K., Molinari, J., & Kalko, E. K. V. (2014). Driving Factors for the Evolution of Species-Specific Echolocation Call Design in New World Free-Tailed Bats (Molossidae). PLoS ONE, 9(1), e85279.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085279