Biodiversity Dynamics
Main Goal
We
study ecology, evolution and biodiversity of aquatic organisms, mostly
fish, their prey and their predators. We are mostly concernd with
evolutionary and ecological diversity dynamics. We wish to understand
variation between evolutionary lineages in their rates and mechanisms
of evolutionary diversification, in their current diversity, and in the
rates of loss of diversity. This includes the origins, maintenance and
loss of adaptive divergence between populations, of polymorphisms
within populations, and of new species and macroevolutionary diversity.
Ultimately,
we like to understand how origin, maintenance and loss of biodiversity
are affected by environmental variation, heterogeneity and change. To
this end we apply methods from experimental and quantitative ecology,
behaviour, morphology, molecular population genetics and phylogenetics.
Our main model systems are adaptive radiations of fish, such as the
cichlid fish in the great lakes of Africa, the coregonids (whitefish)
in the prealpine lake system, and the different ecotypes and
geographical varieties of trouts, char and stickleback.
Major Themes
Team
- Ole Seehausen, group leader
- Katie Wagner, PostDoc
- Irene Keller, PostDoc
- Pascal Vonlanthen, PostDoc
- Jakob Brodersen, PostDoc
- Julia Schwarzer, DFG Postdoctral Fellow - starting spring 2013
- Kay Lucek, PhD Student
- Bänz Lundsgaard, PhD Student
- David Alexander Marques, PhD Student
- Joana Meier, PhD Student
- Oliver Selz, PhD Student
- Guy Périat, Projet coordinator
- Thierry Aebischer, MSc Student
- Samuel Wittwer, MSc Student
- Rahel Thommen, MSc Student
- Jessica Rieder, MSc Student
- Jennifer Pulver, MSc Student
- Carmela Dönz, MSc Student
- Christian Rösch, MSc Student
- Jonas Walker, BSc Student