News

Today, the topping-out wreath was raised on the shell of the new joint biodiversity building of IGB and the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB). Attended and celebrated by about 70 guests on the Dahlem research campus. Of course, everyone was proud of the new building and looking forward to the closer collaboration between IGB and FUB.

The populations of all reptile species and almost all amphibian species have declined over the past 120 years. Amphibians are particularly sensitive indicators of the state of our ecosystems. One of the Red List species experts is IGB researcher Matthias Stöck.

In the latest IGB Policy Brief on the occasion of the 2021 federal elections, scientists recommend that politicians take urgent measures to combat the massive decline in freshwater biodiversity and thus safeguard important ecosystem services.

If fish are hunted by birds, it is essential to their survival that they are able to recognise when they are in danger from avian predators. Juliane Lukas, Jens Krause and David Bierbach from IGB have investigated whether fish are able to differentiate between real danger and non-threatening events.

In two special issues of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, researchers provide a scientific overview.

How do hydropower plants affect freshwater biodiversity? What do invasive species do in water bodies? Sonja Jähnig and Christian Wolter  in an interview with Juliane Grüning from the Deutscher Naturschutzring. 

Justyna Wolinska and Ramsy Agha study organisms that until now have largely been consigned to the shadows in the scientific world: parasites. In the interview, the two scientists explain why it may be worthwhile to look for the good in what appears to be bad.

Jonathan Jeschke has studied the close relationships between infectious diseases and biological invasions.