Projects

Inner-city ponds provide essential functions for urban areas, but their stability is threatened by many stressors such as anthropogenic pollution. The project leaders aim to investigate whether pond ecosystems become more resilient through evolutionary or microbiome-mediated adaptation of water fleas (Daphnia) to urban pollution.

Using the example of the western Baltic cod (Gadus morhua), in this project we are interdisciplinarily studying questions of responsibility and reorganization of the commercial and recreational fisheries.

The “GeoFRESH” online platform will allow high-resolution geospatial queries of the global hydrographic network, and enables users to download analysis-ready environmental data.

The nature of interactions between the freshwater mosses, their microbiome, and the associated toxic cyanobacteria

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

Neurotoxic cyanobacteria in association with aquatic plants pose a real health threat, which could even further increase in the future.

In this scientific network, we are investigating social-ecological networks in urban areas in an international and interdisciplinary team over a period of three years.

Our project aims to understand the evolution of individual and collective intelligence in fish due to size-selective harvesting (like in fisheries) and the fitness consequences using zebrafish as a model.