Curriculum vitae

Research interest

Insect timing 
The endogenous system that structures insect diurnal and seasonal activity has profound effects on the interaction with the environment. Once efficient strategies such as diapause may become mal-adaptive in a changing climate. 

Phenotypic plasticity and bet-hedging 
As climate predictability decreases, evolutionary strategies to cope with lack of information gain in importance. 

Mating systems 
I am interested in mating systems that deviate from standard patterns of biparental recombination, e.g. seasonally cyclic parthenogenesis and self-pollination.

Projects

2021 – now    ECOLOPES 
Ecolopes proposes a radical change for city development: instead of minimizing the negative impact of urbanisation on nature, we aim at urbanisation to be planned and designed such that animals – including humans –, plants and microbes can co-inhabit the city for mutual benefit. As part of the Ecolopes team I will model the plant and soil components of the ecolope, i.e. the multi-species living envelope surrounding built structures.
Link: https://www.ecolopes.org/

2018 - 2021    DFG Research fellowship “Estimas- Escaping in Time and Space” 
In this project I studied the role of phenotypic plasticity and bet-hedging (risk aversion) strategies in coping with changing environments. I reviewed the relationship among these two terms and studied their relative prevalence for one trait, arthropod diapause, in a meta-analysis. Furthermore, I classified various costs and limits of bet-hedging to integrate them with costs and limits of phenotypic plasticity.
Link: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/398170603 

2013 – 2017    Collaborative Research Centre 1047 “Insect Timing”
My PhD research was embedded in the CRC “Insect Timing”, which studied the diurnal and seasonal timing of insects from multiple perspectives, ranging from molecular biology via neuroethology to ecology. As part of subproject C3 “Timing and phenology shifts in interacting plant – herbivore – predator systems”, I studied the constraints circadian clocks and diurnal rhythms may impose on species phenologies.
Link: https://www.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/neurogenetics/sfb1047/startseite/