News

When the last individual dies, species not only disappear from our planet. They also disappear from our collective memory. This phenomenon is called "societal extinction". Researchers have now studied the process and published their results in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

Stephanie Spahr talks about her focus on water pollution and how simple solutions often require complex knowledge. Rain is her favourite water resource and she likes the idea of Berlin as a sponge city for a future-oriented water management.

Jens Krause has published a review study on the social influence of rule breaking. Together with his co-author Marcel Brass, he explains why rule breaking is contagious and how knowledge about it can be used to prevent it.

Dörthe Tetzlaff's research group is studying a city’s water flows using Berlin as an example. The team focused on the extreme drought of the summers of 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Hydroelectric turbines put fish at risk of severe injury during passage. To support an informed debate on the sustainability of hydropower, reliable data of turbine-induced fish mortality are pivotal. A team of researchers has now provided a first global analysis. On average, 22.3 percent of all fish passing through turbines got killed or showed severe, potentially lethal injuries.

Due to global climate change, lakes around the world are getting warmer and freezing over on fewer days of the year. An international research team with Georgiy Kirillin from the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) has recently shown that the changes would not have occurred without increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

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.