Dr.

Sabine Wollrab

Head of Department
Research Group Leader
Department
(Dept. 3) Plankton and Microbial Ecology
Email
sabine.wollrab@igb-berlin.de
Phone
033082 69926
Fax
033082 69917

Zur alten Fischerhütte 2, OT Neuglobsow, 16775 Stechlin

Profile
Research group
Theoretical Ecology
Expertise

Theoretical Ecology, Food Web Dynamics, Structured Population Dynamics, Predator-Prey Interactions, Aquatic Food Webs, Spatial ecology, Meta-population/community models

CV

since 10/2025:           Co-Head of Department of Plankton and Microbial Ecology, IGB Berlin

11/2022 – 10/2023:  Deputy Department Head (interim) at Department of Plankton and Microbial Ecology, IGB Berlin

since 2014:                  Research Group Leader, IGB Berlin

2013 – 2014:               Postdoc, Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University, Lansing, USA

2013:                             PhD in Theoretical Ecology, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München

Publications

2026

August 2026
Stephanie E. Figary; Michael F. Meyer; Rachel M. Pilla; Warren J. S. Currie; Javier Alcocer; María Belén Alfonso; Caitlin M. Andrews; Orlane Anneville; Ana M. Antão-Geraldes; Shelley E. Arnott; Syuhei Ban; Arnab Banerjee; Gábor Bernát; Jessica E. Beyer; Kätlin Blank; Kelly L. Bowen; Christer Brönmark; Rosalie Bruel; Sarah H. Burnet; Tyler J. Butts; Cayelan C. Carey; Rossana Caroni; Moitreyee Chakrabarty; Sudeep Chandra; Kirsten S. Christoffersen; Alicia Cortés; Maria Cristina Crispim; Elvira de Eyto; Luciana De Souza Cardoso; Bridget R. Deemer; Curtis L. DeGasperi; Braden C. DeMattei; Jianming Deng; Jean-Pierre Descy; Inta Dimante-Deimantovica; Nadia Diovisalvi; Renata Dondajewska-Pielka; Jonathan P. Doubek; Tvrtko Dražina; Hilary A. Dugan; Zorka Dulić; Ashley A. Dunker; Gaël Dur; Brie A. Edwards; Jolanta E. Ejsmont-Karabin; Mariam Elmarsafy; Zeynep Ersoy; Rocio Fernandez; Heidrun Feuchtmayr; Maria Soledad Fontanarrosa; Elena Forasacco; László G.-Tóth; Evelyn E. Gaiser; Gideon Gal; Anita Galir; Javier R. Garcia de Souza; Scott F. Girdner; Ryszard Goldyn; K. David Hambright; David P. Hamilton; Lars-Anders Hansson; Susan P. Hendricks; Huihuang Chen; Pascal M. Isumbisho; Stéphan Jacquet; Jun Yang; Martin J. Kainz; Maciej Karpowicz; Samiullah Khan; Katarzyna Kowalczewska-Madura; Natalia Kuczyńska-Kippen; Silke Langenheder; Sarah D. Lawhun; Barbara Leoni; Fabio Lepori; Shuqi Lin; Arni H. Litt; Eleanor B. Mackay; Marina M. Manca; Shin-ichiro S. Matsuzaki; Blake Matthews; Linda May; Yvonne R. McElarney; Christopher J. McLimans; Rosemberg F. Menezes; Ewa Merz; Evangelia Michaloudi; S. Jannicke Moe; Dörthe C. Müller-Navarra; Manuel E. Muñoz-Colmenares; Kayden C. Nasworthy; Veronica Nava; Jens C. Nejstgaard; Ulrike Obertegger; David A. Ortiz; Luis A. Oseguera; Michael J. Paterson; Maria Cintia Piccolo; Lorena Pinheiro-Silva; Roberta Piscia; Francesco

The Zooplankton International Geospatial dataset: A global repository of spatiotemporal freshwater zooplankton community composition data from lakes and reservoirs to support ecological research

Limnology and Oceanography Letters. - 11(2026)5, Art. e70152
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/lol2.70152
March 2026
Abigail S. L. Lewis; David C. Richardson; Dexter W. Howard; Cayelan C. Carey; Benjamin M. Kraemer; Yael Amitai; Sheel Bansal; Elvira de Eyto; Hans-Peter Grossart; Kathryn K. Hoffman; Rachel A. Hovel; Lesley Knoll; Isabella A. Oleksy; Arianto Budi Santoso; Martin Schmid; Robert Schwefel; Dietmar Straile; Xinyu Sun; Gesa A. Weyhenmeyer; Whitney M. Woelmer; Sabine Wollrab; Petr Znachor

Seasons and seasonality in lakes: A synthesis amid global change

Limnology and Oceanography Letters. - 11(2026)2, Art. e70116
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/lol2.70116

2025

June 2025
Sabine Wollrab; Silke R. Schmidt; Jason Woodhouse; Peter Kasprzak; Stella A. Berger; Ute Beyer; Matthias Bodenlos; Johanna Dalchow; Monika Degebrodt; Lars Ganzert; Thomas Gonsiorczyk; Elfi Huth; Christine Kiel; Lutz Küchler; Lothar Krienitz; Maren Lentz; Elke Mach; Uta Mallok; Jens C. Nejstgaard; Monika Papke; Armin Penske; Solvig Pinnow; Reingard Roßberg; Diethelm Ronneberger; Michael Sachtleben; Adelheid Scheffler; Hans-Peter Grossart; Peter Casper; Mark O. Gessner; Rainer Koschel

Fifty years of limnological data on Lake Stechlin, a temperate clearwater lake

Scientific Data. - 12(2025), Art. 1028
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05319-8
February 2025
Jeremy Fonvielle; Lukas Thuile Bistarelli; Yile Tao; Jason N. Woodhouse; Tom Shatwell; Luis A. Villalba; Stella A. Berger; Christopher C.M. Kyba; Jens C. Nejstgaard; Andreas Jechow; Franziska Kupprat; Susanne Stephan; Tim J.W. Walles; Sabine Wollrab; Franz Hölker; Thorsten Dittmar; Mark O. Gessner; Gabriel A. Singer; Hans-Peter Grossart

Skyglow increases cyanobacteria abundance and organic matter cycling in lakes

Water Research. - 278(2025), Art. 123315
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2025.123315

2024

2023

2022

December 2022
von: Stephan Garack, Marco Neubert, Axel Sauer, Juliane Albrecht Leibniz-Institut für ökologische Raumentwicklung (IÖR) e. V., Dresden; Kerstin Günther, Martin Friedrichs-Manthey, Sabine Wollrab, Sonja Jähnig, Stella A. Berger, Ulrike Kienel, Georgiy Kirillin, Leibniz-Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB) im Forschungsverbund Berlin e. V., Berlin. Herausgeber: Umweltbundesamt

Entwicklung der ökologischen Beschaffenheit von Oberflächengewässern im Klimawandel: Wirkungsmechanismen, Modellierungsansätze und Handlungsempfehlungen zur Umsetzung der EG-WRRL ; [Abschlussbericht, Abschlussdatum: Mai 2021]

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/entwicklung-der-oekologischen-beschaffenheit-von
September 2022
Malgorzata Golub; Wim Thiery; Rafael Marcé; Don Pierson; Inne Vanderkelen; Daniel Mercado-Bettin; R. Iestyn Woolway; Luke Grant; Eleanor Jennings; Benjamin M. Kraemer; Jacob Schewe; Fang Zhao; Katja Frieler; Matthias Mengel; Vasiliy Y. Bogomolov; Damien Bouffard ... Georgiy Kirillin ... Tom Shatwell ... Rita Adrian ... Sabine Wollrab ...

A framework for ensemble modelling of climate change impacts on lakes worldwide: the ISIMIP Lake Sector

Geoscientific Model Development. - 15(2022), 4597–4623
http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-4597-2022
March 2022
Stephan Garack (Dresden); Sabine Wollrab; Sonja Jähnig; Kerstin Günther; Stella A. Berger (Berlin); Marco Neubert; Juliane Albrecht (Dresden); Martin Friedrichs-Manthey (Berlin/Leipzig); Axel Sauer (Dresden); Georgyi Kirillin (Berlin)

Entwicklung der ökologischen Beschaffenheit von Oberflächengewässern im Klimawandel

KW Korrespondenz Wasserwirtschaft. - 15(2022)2, 98-107

2021

December 2021
Andreas Jechow; Günther Schreck; Christopher C. M. Kyba; Stella A. Berger; Lukas Thuile Bistarelli; Matthias Bodenlos; Mark O. Gessner; Hans-Peter Grossart; Franziska Kupprat; Jens C. Nejstgaard; Andreas Pansch; Armin Penske; Michael Sachtleben; Tom Shatwell; Gabriel A. Singer; Susanne Stephan; Tim J. W. Walles; Sabine Wollrab; Karolina M. Zielinska-Dabkowska; Franz Hölker

Design and implementation of an illumination system to mimic skyglow at ecosystem level in a large-scale lake enclosure facility

Scientific Reports. - 11(2021), Art. 23478
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02772-4

2020

2017

2015

BLIC

The relative influence of biodiversity and biotic interactions on the early stages of phytoplankton bloom formation.

Contact persons
Sabine Wollrab
Department(s)
(Dept. 3) Plankton and Microbial Ecology
Start
09/2023
End
08/2026
Programme area(s)

CONNECT

Connectivity and synchronisation of lake ecosystems in space and time

Contact persons
Stella A. Berger
Sabine Wollrab
Department(s)
(Dept. 1) Ecohydrology and Biogeochemistry
(Dept. 3) Plankton and Microbial Ecology
Start
05/2018
End
10/2022
Programme area(s)

FungiTrait

Food web dynamics and energy transport from phyto- to zooplankton under the influence of parasitic fungi.

Contact persons
Hans-Peter Grossart
Sabine Wollrab
Department(s)
(Dept. 3) Plankton and Microbial Ecology
Start
03/2018
End
02/2022
Programme area(s)

Bridging in Biodiversity Science (BIBS)

BIBS is a BMBF project for biodiversity data collection and synthesis in Germany

Contact persons
Mark Gessner
Hans-Peter Grossart
Department(s)
(Dept. 3) Plankton and Microbial Ecology
(Dept. 5) Evolutionary and Integrative Ecology
Start
12/2016
End
08/2021
Programme area(s)

BactiTrait

Comparing phenotypic plasticity in bacterial prey traits and ecological consequences by using specialist vs. generalist strains and organic aggregates as model systems.

Contact persons
Hans-Peter Grossart
Sabine Wollrab
Department(s)
(Dept. 3) Plankton and Microbial Ecology
Start
07/2015
End
12/2018
Programme area(s)

ILES

Skyglow, the diffuse illumination of the night sky by artificial light, has never before been experienced during evolutionary history. Together with another feature of global change – the brownification of lakes caused by humic substances – skyglow disrupts the current light conditions in lake ecosystems. We will elucidate the ecological consequences of these phenomena and the mechanisms underlying them.

Contact persons
Mark Gessner
Franz Hölker
Department(s)
(Dept. 1) Ecohydrology and Biogeochemistry
(Dept. 2) Community and Ecosystem Ecology
(Dept. 3) Plankton and Microbial Ecology
(Dept. 4) Fish Biology, Fisheries and Aquaculture
Start
07/2015
End
06/2018
Programme area(s)
Former Publications

2013

Wollrab, S., De Roos A.M. & Diehl, S. (2013) Ontogenetic diet shifts promote predator-mediated coexistence. Ecology, 94, 2886–2897.

2012

Wollrab, S., Diehl, S., & De Roos, A.M. (2012) Simple rules describe bottom-up and top-down control in food webs with alternative energy pathways. Ecology Letters, 15, 935-946.