On 28 February-2 may, 2015, Prof Stephan Hättenschwiler was invited by the research group of ecological stoichiometry to visit our institute and gave seminars entitled as “Biodiversity- Ecosystem Functioning: A view from the decomposer system”, “Amazonian trees for nutrients by starving decomposers ”and “ Linking P and C cycling in the decomposer system of an Amazonian rainforest”. He illustrated the impact of insufficient biodiversity on the rate of litter decomposition and related potential mechanism. Problems related to research method for litter decomposition and hypothesis that carbon limitation controls the rate of litter decomposition were warmly discussed on the seminar.

Prof Stephan Hättenschwiler has been working on functional ecology, ecological stoichiometry and litter decomposition, especially contributed to the research in relations between biodiversity and litter decomposition and related mechanisms.

In recent years , he published some papers in Nature，Science，PNAS，Ecology Letters，Trends in Ecology and Evolution，Annual Reviews of Ecology. He is currently the executive editor of Oecologia.