Aquatic Ecology: Biodiversity Dynamics

Navigator

Contact

Head of Division
Prof. Dr. Ole Seehausen

Administration
Susanne Maurer
Institute of Ecology & Evolution
Baltzerstrasse 6
CH-3012 Bern

Tel. +41 (0)31 631 30 09
Fax +41 (0)31 631 30 08
susanne.maurer@esh.unibe.ch

Biodiversity Dynamics

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.