News

The beginning of 2022 marks a special milestone for IGB, because a lot has changed: We have restructured our departments and recruited two excellent heads for the management board. At the same time, new programme areas are being prepared. And we have also made a visual change. With all of these changes, we intend to express our current mission and research priorities more clearly.

Jonathan Jeschke took over as head of the new IGB Department of Evolutionary and Integrative Ecology on 1 January 2022. In an interview, he tells us why integration is his guiding principle, what new methods and approaches he is pursuing, and how he would like to promote young scientists in particular.

Sonja Jähnig has been appointed Head of Department at IGB since 1 January 2022. In an interview, the professor talks about her personal goals, what each of us really should know about rivers and lakes, and why water bodies are often overlooked.

Lakes in alpine locations react sensitively to climate change. Researchers led by IGB and the Faculty of Geosciences at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China, have analysed in detail the changes in a lake in the northern Tibetan highlands since the end of the last ice age. Sediment samples dating back thousands of years show strong ecological changes due to rising temperatures and the influence of melting glaciers. 

Researchers at IGB have found that the Mexican waves collectively produced by tiny fish in Mexico actually reduce both their predatory birds' propensity to attack as well as the birds’ hunting success.  Functionally, these waves may work as a signal from the fish to the birds: “We know you are there, don’t waste your time on attacking us!”

Justyna Wolinska has successfully passed the six-year tenure track phase, and has now been jointly appointed to a permanent professorship for Aquatic Evolutionary Ecology by IGB and Freie Universität Berlin.

Light pollution is a serious threat to all levels of biodiversity – from genes to ecosystems. An international team of researchers has identified 11 urgent research questions that need to be addressed in order to mitigate the effects of light pollution on biodiversity.

Researchers from 90 scientific institutions worldwide have stated that freshwater biodiversity research and conservation lag far behind the efforts carried out in terrestrial and marine environments. In a new publication in Ecology Letters, they propose a research agenda with 15 priorities aimed at improving research on biodiversity in lakes, rivers, ponds and wetlands. This is urgently needed, as biodiversity loss is taking place much faster in inland waters than on land or in the oceans.