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Birds are among the key predators of insects on which they depend for food and have developed various strategies to hunt them effectively. Insects, on the other hand, try to escape predation with various defense mechanisms. But what happens if the birds disappear from the environment? Will this improve insect survival, or will other predators take their place? And what role does tree identity play in these complex interactions? We investigate these and other questions in our global experiment, where we manipulate the presence of different predators to better understand the dynamics of predation and its effects on ecosystems. Kateřina Sam studied zoology and ecosystem biology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, where she also received a doctorate in ornithology. Since 2017, she has been the head of the Multitrophic Interactions Laboratory at the Entomological Institute of the Biological Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in České Budějovice. She has completed internships and research stays in Copenhagen and Queensland, Australia, and in the past ten years has spent a lot of time in field research in Papua New Guinea. She is the author or co-author of a number of publications in high-impact journals, including Science.