News

How do animals and plants survive and thrive in cities? Urban ecology is a growing research field. To find orientation in the information jungle on urban ecology, a team led by IGB and Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin) has created a map of 62 important research hypotheses in urban ecology. Among them are the idea of the daring city dweller, life on credit or the biological monotony of cities. Research has yet to show how robust the hypotheses are and to which cities they apply. The overview provides an important basis for this endeavor. It is openly available in Wikidata.

A chronicle of an environmental disaster on the River Oder: Images of huge quantities of dead fish – covering all species and sizes – shocked the German, Polish and international public in August 2022. IGB researchers set about tracking down the causes. IGB was the first institution to determine that the disaster was definitely man-made.

An international team has set up a database with geo-referenced occurrence records of four groups of freshwater invertebrate taxa across Cuba. Detailed knowledge of the spatial distribution of freshwater species is an important basis for monitoring changes in aquatic ecosystems.

Sophia Kimmig spends half her day coordinating the IGB project "AuBe", which develops insect-friendly lighting concepts. The other half of her day is spent writing about the night. Her book "Lebendige Nacht" (Living Night) has just been published – about the wonders of a world we sleep through.

Oxygen is becoming increasingly scarce in deeper layers of lakes and reservoirs due to high nutrient inputs and climate change. As a result, the living conditions of fish and invertebrates deteriorate, greenhouse gases are increasingly produced, and nutrient cycles intensify. In addition, hydrogen sulphide, which is toxic to higher organisms, can accumulate.  The treatment of oxygen deficient deep water to produce drinking water is associated with high costs.

From water to air: we only know many flying insects as adults, but many of them have their first life stages in the water. The larvae of mayflies, for example, spend almost a year in the shallow shore zones of standing waters before they come ashore for a few days as adult flies. These so-called semi-aquatic insects are an important food source for animals in the water and on land and are used as bioindicators to assess water quality and the state of freshwater ecosystems.

Ensuring clean water supply for all people and conserving life below water are among the global SDGs. However, almost all of the Earth's waters are impacted, if not clearly altered, by human use. That is why many initiatives are currently being taken to restore peatlands, flowing waters and their floodplains, lakes and other stagnant waters. Researchers at IGB are exploring how best to go about this.

Imagine being able to access a virtual platform that not only provides access to data from a wide range of aquatic disciplines but also enables smooth processing and analysis of the data. This vision could soon become a reality through the EU project AquaINFRA, where IGB is an important contributor.