Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

The Aquatic Ecology department at Eawag consists of eight research groups and covers a wide range of different disciplines in ecology and evolutionary biology, ranging from the individual level to associations and ecosystems. Learn more

Stagnant water, gaps in the forest and dead trees: bats find good hunting conditions here. (Photo: Christof Angst)

November 13, 2025 –

A study shows that land animals benefit from beaver dam construction – for example, endangered bats.

Epigenomics of rapid adaptation in invasive Quagga mussels

A multi phase research program by Eawag and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN)

Climate Change and Freshwater Biodiversity

Together with climate change, biodiversity loss is the most pressing environmental crisis of our time. The "Translational Centre Biodiversity Conservation" bundles knowledge and makes it generally available. In collaboration with key Swiss stakeholders, the Centre identifies topics for knowledge exchange, translation, and synthesis, and communicates and distributes the resulting synthesis products.

Translational Centre Biodiversity Conservation (TCBC)

The architecture of community structure, functional traits and trophic networks across blue-green ecosystems

Architecture of blue-green communities

Dieses Projekt leistet einen Beitrag zur Blue Green Biodiversity Research Initiative - einer Eawag-WSL-Kollaboration, die sich auf die Biodiversität an der Schnittstelle von aquatischen und terrestrischen Ökosystemen konzentriert.

Warming-related community turnover in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems

Why do toxic cyanobacteria bloom? A gene to ecosystem approach...

Cyano Bloom

Understanding and measuring how flow intermittency drives biodiversity and river functions in an alpine environment

Alpine Streams and Flow Intermittency

Freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems and their interfaces are hotspots of biodiversity and the underlying ecological and evolutionary processes.

An Eawag-WSL collaboration focusing on Biodiversity at the interface of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

Blue Green Biodiversity Research Initiative

More current Research Projects

Bizzozzero, M. R., Marfurt, S. M., Altermatt, F., Willems, E. P., Damm-Reiser, A., Allen, S. J., … Krützen, M. (2025). Integrating environmental DNA metabarcoding and remote sensing reveals known and novel fish diversity hotspots in a world heritage area. Diversity and Distributions, 31(11), e70074 (20 pp.). doi:10.1111/ddi.70074, Institutional Repository

Aim: Shark Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Western Australia, is highly vulnerable to climate change, yet its fish biodiversity remains poorly understood at fine spatial scales. We integrated environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding with high-resolution remote sensing to assess and extrapolate fish diversity patterns, providing a scalable framework for biodiversity monitoring in dynamic coastal ecosystems.
Location: Shark Bay, Western Australia.
Methods: We analysed 270 water samples across 560 km² using fish-specific 16S and 12S rRNA metabarcoding, comparing our results to earlier studies using conventional methods including seining, trawling, fisheries reports, and fish traps. We linked biodiversity patterns to key environmental variables, including depth, salinity, sea surface temperature, and habitat characteristics derived from high-resolution satellite imagery. To predict fish biodiversity across unsampled areas, we employed machine-learning models, enabling spatial extrapolation of eDNA data across the seascape.
Results: eDNA metabarcoding identified 106 fish species across 132 genera and 71 families, with substantial overlap with conventional monitoring but broader coverage at higher taxonomic levels. Fish richness increased with decreasing salinity, high channel habitat coverage, and moderate depths with high seagrass coverage. We delineated five distinct fish communities (A–E): two shallow seagrass communities—one in sparse seagrass (A) and another in dense seagrass (B), one in channel habitats (C) with the greatest fish diversity; one in deep sandy waters (D) and one in medium-depth, seagrass-free areas (E). Additionally, we detected several tropical species, suggesting poleward shifts due to rising water temperatures.
Main Conclusions: This study highlights the utility of combining marine eDNA metabarcoding with remote sensing to detect fine-scale biodiversity. The integration of machine learning enables spatial upscaling and timely responses to habitat changes, enhancing marine conservation and management. By identifying key environmental drivers of fish diversity, this approach supports proactive conservation strategies, providing a scalable model for biodiversity monitoring under climate change.

Levasseur, S., Weber de Melo, V., Lambers, J. H. R., Klausmeier, C. A., Kremer, C. T., Litchman, E., … Narwani, A. (2025). Warm-loving species perform well under limiting resources: trait combinations for future climate. Global Change Biology, 31(10), e70554 (18 pp.). doi:10.1111/gcb.70554, Institutional Repository

Ecosystems are warming alongside shifts in other abiotic factors, leading to interactive effects on populations and communities. This underscores the importance of studying how organisms respond to multiple environmental changes simultaneously. In pelagic ecosystems, as surface waters warm, longer and stronger periods of thermal stratification lead to changes in resource (light and nutrient) availability. We investigate the combined effects of temperature and resource availability on the growth rates of 19 populations (comprising 17 species) of freshwater phytoplankton in order to examine how temperature influences the minimum resource requirements (and Monod parameters) for light, nitrogen, and phosphorus. We also evaluate how resource availability affects each population's thermal traits (i.e., thermal performance curve - TPC - parameters). When averaged across all populations, the requirements for light and phosphorus tended to display a U-shaped relationship along temperatures. Individual populations varied greatly in their responses to temperature, leading to shifts in the identity of the best competitor across the thermal gradient, particularly for nitrogen and phosphorus. TPC responses to resource limitation were highly variable, but thermal optima and maxima of individual populations often decreased with resource limitation, and thermal breadths (range where growth is 80% or more of its maximum) often increased due to a flattening of TPCs. Across all populations and resource types, the maximum optimum temperature across resource levels (maximum T_opt) tended to be positively correlated with the temperature at which populations had the lowest resource requirements (minimum R*). However, the temperature at which populations were the best competitors tended to be ~5°C colder on average than the temperature at which they grew the fastest. The populations with the highest thermal optima also had the lowest minimum resource requirements. Our findings reveal trait associations suggesting that some taxa already exhibit trait combinations that would support high performance under future warm and resource-limited conditions.

Vila, M., Marí-Mena, N., Vila, R., Riesgo, A., García-Souto, D., Lopez-Vaamonde, C., … Bortoluzzi, C. (2025). ERGA-BGE genome of the Spanish moon moth Actias isabellae Graells, 1849: a nocturnal lepidopteran protected by the Habitats Directive. Open Research Europe, 5, 175 (13 pp.). doi:10.12688/openreseurope.20658.2, Institutional Repository

Further publications

Department Aquatic Ecology

Aquatic Ecology

The latest news from our department

Beavers create habitats for bats

10 years of Eawag Sensorlab

Indirect effects drive evolution

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SNSF Starting Grants and Ambizione Fellowships

Aquascope

Research Projects