About
16
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Introduction
PostDoc/Scientific Assistant at the University of Cologne, Institute of Zoology, in the group of "General Ecology".
My research interests include biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship, food quality (in particular the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids) and food-web dynamics within freshwater ecosystems, as well as aquatic-terrestrial subsidies.
PhD in Aquatic Chemical Ecology (2019)
Current institution
Additional affiliations
October 2023 - present
November 2019 - present
March 2019 - October 2019
Education
October 2012 - September 2014
October 2009 - August 2012
Publications
Publications (16)
Unidirectional drift is amongst the most relevant population regulators in riverine animal populations. Drift occurs randomly, but it can also be a behavioural response to abiotic and biotic stressors, or the result of catastrophic events such as heavy rain. In this study, we investigate the spatiotemporal distribution of larvae of the fire salaman...
In this study, we use the model organism Daphnia magna to determine variation in heat tolerance within a natural population and relate this to variation in body fatty acid content and composition. As a proxy for heat tolerance we measured time to immobilization (Timm) for 25 clonal lineages isolated from a single lake. The clonal lineages were grow...
The eutrophication of lakes and ponds through anthropogenic nutrient input has resulted in higher frequencies of cyanobacterial blooms worldwide. The increased availability of nitrate (NO3⁻) plays an important role for the development of such blooms and also affects the content of secondary metabolites in cyanobacteria. Cyanobacterial protease inhi...
Essential polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been recognized as a crucial factor that determines the trophic transfer efficiency in plankton communities. As many animals cannot synthesize the classes of ω3‐ and ω6‐PUFAs, the dietary availability of these PUFAs can constrain the fitness of freshwater zooplankton such as Daphnia spp. In particu...
• Functional traits are measurable characteristics of an organism that have an impact on its fitness. Variation in functional traits between and among species has been suggested to represent the basis for competition and selection, thus allowing for evolution in natural populations.
• In freshwater ecosystems, the availability of essential polyunsa...
Nutrient dynamics in headwater streams are governed by benthic and hyporheic biofilms, with carbon (C) : nitrogen (N) : phosphorus (P) ratios driving the heterotrophic microbial biofilm development through nutrient limitation. Furthermore, heterotrophic responses to changes in C : N : P ratios are probably modulated by autotrophic responses to ligh...
Human land-use intensification threatens arthropod (for example, insect and spider) biodiversity across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Insects and spiders play critical roles in ecosystems by accumulating and synthesizing organic nutrients such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). However, links between biodiversity and nutrient content of...
Global change drives multiple facets of biodiversity including interaction diversity, which is fundamental for ecosystem functioning. However, studying trophic interactions is challenging in meta‐ecosystems, that is ecosystems connected by spatial flows of energy, materials and organisms across ecosystem boundaries. While analytical methods based o...
Graphs in research articles can increase the comprehension of statistical data but may mislead readers if poorly designed. We propose a new plot type, the sea stack plot, which combines vertical histograms and summary statistics to represent large univariate datasets accurately, usefully, and efficiently. We compare five commonly used plot types (d...
1. Graphs in research articles can increase the comprehension of statistical data but may mislead readers if poorly designed. Previous literature has found that the two most frequently used plot types - bar charts and dot and whisker plots - are a poor way to represent data because they only show the summary statistics of data, not their distributi...
Network inference models have been widely applied in ecological, genetic and social studies to infer unknown interactions. However, little is known about how well the models perform and whether they produce reliable results when confronted with networks where weak interactions predominate and for different amounts of data. This is an important cons...
Cyanobacterial blooms often produce different classes and chemical variants of toxins such as dietary protease inhibitors (PIs) that affect the keystone grazer Daphnia. However, it has been shown that Daphnia populations are able to locally adapt to frequently occurring dietary PIs by modulating their digestive proteases. Up until now,
local adapta...
Ant mimicry, i.e., the mimicking of ant workers by another organism, is a widespread phenomenon among different groups of Euarthropoda, including spiders and different insect species. One example of ant mimicry occurs among praying mantises (Mantodea); here the first stage nymphs have been recorded to perform ant mimicry. In this study, we investig...
