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When predators strike, fish need to decide fast: dive or stay? It’s a life-or-death choice, and getting it wrong, whether by overreacting to harmless disturbances or missing a real threat, can be costly. Now, researchers from the Cluster of Excellence “Science of Intelligence” (SCIoI) with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), have shown that wild fish shoals become not just faster, but better at making these decisions as they grow in size.

Scientists from IGB present long-term monitoring data on water quality of Lake Stechlin in the journal Scientific Data. The team makes this data available to other researchers via IGB's data platform FRED.

Too little rain, too little water in the landscape – so simple, so serious. Even if the drought is obvious because freshwaters carry less water, plants wither and the soil becomes brittle and cracked, the drying out itself is a complex process in which the spatial context plays an important role. Professor Dörthe Tetzlaff from the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) is investigating this interplay of environmental factors, water storage and water flows in the landscape, focussing on the Berlin-Brandenburg region.

In an ICPO consultation, the IGB recommends that the salinity of the Oder should be made an important management issue. 

Aquatic fungi are among the least researched groups of organisms on Earth. A video project reveals their hidden world.

IGB gave feedback in the Call for Evidence on the new EU Bioeconomy Strategy and highlighted the central role of water and freshwater ecosystems.

Promoting scientific progress as a top priority. This is how Mark Gessner outlines the core mission of the Society for Freshwater Science, the world's most important professional society for river ecology today. Equally important, however, particularly in these disturbing times for science policy, is to highlight the relevance of freshwater research for intelligent water resource management and to communicate the importance of freshwater to the broader public.

To survive as a species, aquatic organisms have developed a wide variety of strategies. Millions of years ago, sturgeons used their bony shells to fend off predators and relocate their habitats, sulphur mollies survive in toxic, almost oxygen-free water, and fish stocks in the River Oder are gradually recovering from the 2022 disaster. However, there are limits to the resilience of organisms, and these can be seen even in the tiniest single-celled creatures.