Evolutionary Biology

2024

• October 2024: The workshop "The Evidence Synthesis Toolkit: Perspectives from Philosophy and Biology", co-organised by Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar, takes place on the 7th and 8th (program at: https://shorturl.at/h3NKR; more at: https://shorturl.at/4OP1V)
• September 2024: We heartwarmingly welcome Andrea Prussack (https://shorturl.at/y2E4c) as our secretary. We are happy to have you on board. 
• March 2024: Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar is honoured to participate as a keynote speaker for the upcoming EOU Fledglings Meeting 2024 in Prague (22-24th March; more at: https://fledglings2024.birdlife.cz/)
• February 2024: Congratulations to Klaus Reinhold for becoming a member of SORTEE's SAB (https://www.sortee.org/people/#senior-advisory-board)
• February 2024: Welcome to Mirjam Borger, who is joining the department to work with Klaus on the D04 NC3 project (https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/biologie/forschung/verbuende/sfb_nc3/projects/d04ph2)
• January 2024: Congratulations to Lukas Eigentler for obtaining an Assistant Professor position at the University of Warwick  (UK).

2023

• August 2023: The Behaviour International Conference took place in Bielefeld. Check out the video featuring ours and other UniBie departments HERE and HERE
• April 2023: Congratulations to Júlio Segovia for having secured a 2-year Walter Benjamin grant from the DFG to work on "Context-dependent behaviour in predator-prey interactions: an evidence synthesis approach".
• April 2023: Welcome to Maria Moiron, who is joining the department as a junior PI to work on evolutionary ecology.
• March 2023: A warm welcome to Chantal Fenn, a new TA for the group.
• January 2023: Welcome to Lukas Eigentler, who just joined the NC3 as a postdoc working on the theory of individualization with Klaus Reinhold.
• January 2023 Congratulations to David Kikuchi for receiving an Assistant Professorship at Oregon State University (USA).

2022

• December 2022: Congratulations to Steve Ramm for obtaining a Junior Professorship at the University of Rennes (France).
• November 2022: Congratulations to Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar for being elected to the Board of Directors of the Society for Open, Transparent, and Reliable Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE), and will serve his turn from 2023-2025.
• November 2022: Congratulations to Sonja Schindler for being elected as the representative in the commission for "research and junior scientist" and as deputy for "Quality management" at Bielefeld University.
• June 2022: A warm welcome to Sarthak Grover, a visiting BS-MS student from IISER Mohali here to pursue a Master thesis project on the evolution of selfing supervised by Steve Ramm.
• May 2022: Welcome to Suhaas Sehgal, a visiting BS-MS student from IISER Mohali, and congratulations on the award of an undergraduate project scholarship from the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour to study resource-dependent sex allocation in Macrostomum lignano together with Steve Ramm.  
• May 2022: Congratulations to Denis Meuthen for obtaining a Freigeist-Fellowship to work on plasticity (more in: here, here).
• April 2022: We hosted the annual graduate meeting of the evolutionary biology section of the German Zoological Society (DZG). The meeting was organised by Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar and Steve Ramm and hosted at the ZiF, with help from many members of the department. Thanks, everyone and to all the attendees, it was wonderful to get back to meeting in person! More information here.
• April 2022: Congratulations to Tuba Rizvi for securing funding through the DAAD to do her PhD on “Shaping female preference functions and shared behavioural traits with varying population density”.
• March 2022: Shreya Dimri has started her PhD on "Evidence synthesis to understand phenotypic variation" as part of the 2nd phase of the SFB-TRR 212.
• February 2022: Tuba Rizvi has started her 6-month BYRF bridge scholarship to work on “Shaping female preference functions and shared behavioural traits with varying population density”.
• February 2022: Júlio Segovia has started his 1-year BYRF bridge scholarship to work on "Context-dependent behaviour in prey-predator interactions”.
• Jan 2022: Denis Meuthen has had his career column on 'how to support lip-reading researchers' published in Nature (here). 

2021

• November 2021: the DFG has confirmed funding for the 2nd phase of the SFB-TRR 212 (more information and advertised positions at: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/biologie/forschung/verbuende/sfb_nc3/).

• October 2021: Shreya Dimri has started her 6-month scholarship from the Department of Evolutionary Biology to start working on “Evidence synthesis to understand phenotypic variation”.

• September 2021: Steve Ramm has been elected as a speaker of the Evolutionary Biology section of the Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft (DZG; German Zoological Society).

• April 2021: Athina Giannakara has begun working as a postdoc on our DFG-funded project on seminal fluid in flatworms, assisted part-time by Sonja Schindler.
• April 2021: Congratulations to Dr Antje Girndt who is now working as Project Manager at the Bertelsmann Foundation. We wish you a successful career outside academia!
• February 2021: Congratulations to Dr Jendrian Riedel for securing funding through the Walter Benjamin Program from the DFG.
• January 2021: Dr Lucia Mentesana has joined us a guest postdoctoral scientist, currently collaborating with Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar on a meta-analysis.
• January 2021: Athina Giannakara successfully defended her PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr Athina for an excellent job!
• January 2021: Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar has joined the Editorial Boards of the journals Behavioral Ecology and Ecology Letters.

2020

• November 2020: Congratulations to Athina Giannakara for handling in her PhD thesis: "The evolution of self-​fertilization in hermaphroditic flatworms"
• November 2020: We congratulate Bora Kim and Jendrian Riedel for receiving a “Bielefeld Young Researcher’s fund”. Bora declined it since she will be moving to the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology (Vienna) to do her PhD thesis under the supervision of Zala Sarah and Penn Dustin.
• November 2020: Congratulations to Bora Kim for accepting a PhD position at the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology (Vienna).
• August 2020: Congratulations to Bora Kim for handling in her Master thesis: "Fitness consequences of male size in Gambusia: A systematic review and meta-analysis"
• July 2020: We welcomed Dr. David Kikuchi as a new post-doc working in one of our projects in the SFB. David works on mimicry and modelling evolution.
• July 2020: Steve Ramm has been awarded a research grant from the DFG to study “The adaptive significance and rapid evolutionary dynamics of seminal fluid” in flatworms.
• July 2020: Thanks and best wishes to departing group member Dr. Michael Weber, former PhD student and for the past year a Bielefeld Young Researchers Fund postdoc.
• June 2020: We congratulate Dr. Denis Meuthen for receiving a “Bielefeld Young Researcher’s fund”. Denis works on phenotypic plasticity in snails and other species.
• May 2020: We welcomed Dr. Antje Girndt as a “Bielefeld Young Researcher’s fund” recipient. Antje works on sperm phenotypic plasticity.
• March 2020: Congratulations to Klaus Reinhold, who was elected to serve for a second period on the DFG board for Zoology.
• February 2020: Congratulations to Pete Trimmer, who has received and accepted an offer for a lectureship at the University of Warwick (UK).
• January 2020: We welcomed Dr. Denis Meuthen as a guest to the department. Denis works on (transgenerational) plasticity.
• Jan 2020: Congratulations to former Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung postdoctoral fellow Dr. Yumi Nakadera on starting her new project on Lymanea seminal fluid with Joris Koene at VU Amsterdam. Looking forward to our continued collaboration!

2019

• December 2019: We said goodbye to Dr. Lucienne Eweleit.
• July 2019: Congratulations to Dr. Nicholas P. Moran on receiving a Marie Curie Fellowhip to work at the Technical University of Denmark.
• July 2019: Best of luck to former PhD student Dr. Bahar Patlar on taking up her new position as a postdoctoral fellow in Alberto Civetta’s lab at the University of Winnipeg, Canada.
• April 2019: Congratulations to Dr. Michael Weber on successfully defending his PhD on the Identification and functional characterisation of seminal fluid proteins in a simultaneously hermaphroditic flatworm!
• April 2019: We welcomed our new Technical Assistant Sonja Schindler.
• March 2019: We welcomed Dr. Sepand Rijayi as a new post-doc working in one of our projects in the SFB.
• January 2019: Congratulations to Dr. Bahar Patlar on successfully defending her PhD on the Evolutionary quantitative genetics of seminal fluid!

2018

• December 2018: We said goodbye to Renate Feist. For more than 40 years she worked as a Technical Assistant in the Faculaty of Biology and held the department of Evolutionary Biology together. Thank you for your commitment!
• July/August 2018: We welcomed Dr. Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar and Dr. Nicholas Moran. Both work on meta-analysis on niche concepts as part of the newly funded SFB.
• July/August 2018: We welcomed Erasmus student Yasin Yarin from Istanbul.
• June 2018: We welcomed Navina Lilie. She started her PhD on a project embeded in the newly funded SFB, supervised by Tim Schmoll and Peter Korsten.
• May 2018: We welcomed Athina Gavanozi from the Democrit University (Greece) as a ERASMUS+ guest student. Athina worked on acoustic communication in Orthopterans, supervised by Klaus Reinhold.
• May 2018: Steve Ramm has joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
• January 2018: Congratulations to Dr. Pablo Valverde on the completion of his PhD project on Phenotypic plasticity and condition-dependent trait expression in sexual ornaments and body colour in the alpine grasshopper Gomphocerus sibiricus.

2017

• December 2017: We said goodbye to Dr. Alicia Jarrige. For one year she joined our group and conducted her Career Bridge project in collaboration with Dr. Tim Schmoll. We wish her all the best for the future.
• November 2017: We hosted the 11. International Macrostomum Meeting.
• November 2017: Congratulations to postdoc Dr. Matthias Galipaud on taking up his new position as a postdoc in Hanna Kokko's group at the University of Zurich.
• October 2017: Welcome to our new postdoc Dr. Rienk Fokkema who joined the department to conduct a Career Bridge project in collaboration with Dr. Tim Schmoll and Peter Korsten.
• September 2017: We hosted the 110. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft. More details here.
• January 2017: Prof. Dr. Klaus Reinhold gave a public lecture "Evolution – alltäglicher als man denkt" organised by the Natural History Museum (namu) and Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein für Bielefeld.

2016

• December 2016: Welcome to our new postdoc Dr. Alicia Jarrige who joined the department to conduct a Career Bridge project in collaboration with Dr. Tim Schmoll.
• October 2016: PD Dr. Tim Schmoll has been appointed Interim Professor for Evolutionary Biology and Systematics at the University of Ulm.
• October 2016: Congratulations to Dr. Shaghayegh Soudi on the completion of her PhD project on Lochmaea beetle speciation! Shaghayegh has now moved to Canada to begin a postdoc project on the genomics of local adaptation at the University of Calgary.
• October 2016: Postdoc Dr. Yumi Nakadera has begun her Alexander von Humboldt research fellowship on seminal fluid in snails.

• September 2016: We welcomed Anais Edme from the University of Olomouc (Czech Republic) as a ERASMUS+ guest student. Anais worked with Dr. Tim Schmoll on the heritability of bird sperm traits.

• September 2016: Steve was a plenary speaker at the Annual Meeting of the German Andrology Society in Saarbrücken.

• November 2016: Wir gratulieren Michael Haneke-Reinders und Dr. Lucienne Eweleit zur erfolgreichen Bewerbung um die Stipendien des Bielefelder Nachwuchsfonds.
• July 2016: Congratulations to Dr. Lucienne Eweleit on the completion of her PhD project on speciation in bushcrickets. Lucienne has been awarded with a postdoc bridge stipend from the University of Bielefeld.
• August 2016: Öncü Maraci joined the group as a postdoc, working on adaptation to climate change.
• Student projects available with Dr. Tim Schmoll. For further informations see.
• Congratulations to our colleague (and former PhD student in the department) Dr. Nils Cordes on the publication of his new book Schreiben im Biologiestudium.
• May 2016: Our former Emmy Noether group leader Prof. Dr. Holger Schielzeth has begun his new Professorship of Population Ecology at the University of Jena. Congratulations Holger! We also said goodbye to Dr. Petra Dieker and Anasuya Chakrabarty, both of whom have joined Holger in Jena. Good luck everyone with the new start!

• April 2016: We welcomed Fran Rebrina from the University of Zagreb (Croatia) as a ERASMUS guest student to work on the evolutionary ecology of grasshoppers and bushcrickets.

• April 2016: Congratulations to PD Dr. Tim Schmoll on obtaining his habilitation.
• Steve has joined the Editorial Board of BMC Evolutionary Biology.
• We were pleased to welcome Marlène Goubault to our group as a visiting ERASMUS guest lecturer hosted by Tim.
• Group members organised two symposia at the 8th European Conference on Behavioural Biology (ECBB 2016) in Vienna from July 12th to the 15th, 2016. Steven Ramm (with Michaela Thoß, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna): Behavior meets proteomics - interdisciplinary insights and prospects. Tim Schmoll (with Marlène Goubault, University of Tours): Integrating pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection when studying mating behaviour.
• February 2016: We hosted the Simultaneously Hermaphroditic Organisms Workshop at the ZiF.
• January 2016: Klaus Reinhold was interviewed by the local newspaper Neue Westfälische Interview.

2015

• November 2015: Klaus Reinhold was elected as a member of the DFG Review Board 203 Zoology.
• We will host the Simultaneously Hermaphroditic Organisms Workshop from 17-19 February 2016. More info here.
• In August, seven members of the department Anasuya, Holger, Michael, Bahar, Shaghayegh, Steve and Yumi attended the ESEB Congress in Lausanne, with Holger organising one of the symposia on "Novel insights in the genetics of sex-specific variation".
• Congratulations to Athina Giannakara for completing her Master thesis on "The effect of sperm competition on the speed of spermatogenesis in the hermaphroditic flatworm Macrostomum lignano".
• Steve's paper in Proceedings B on self-inseminating flatworms received wide media coverage, including these articles in The Guardian, Die Welt,Science, NBC News and Bild der Wissenschaft.

Steve Ramm has joined the Editorial Board of Molecular Human Reproduction

2014

• Steve Ramm hat einen Themenheft zur Spermienkonkurrenz zusammengestellt, das jetzt in der Forschungszeitschrift Molecular Human Reproduction erschienen ist.
• Matthias Galipaud hat als Postdoc in unsere Abteilung mit seinen theoretischen Arbeiten zur Evolution phänotypischer Plastizität begonnen. Willkommen, Matthias!
• Petra Dieker hat als Postdoc in unsere Abteilung mit ihrer Arbeit zur Fitnessmessung bei Heuschrecken begonnen. Willkommen, Petra!
• Bahar Patlar und Michael Weber haben als neue Doktoranden in unsere Abteilung mit ihrer Arbeit zur Samenflüssigkeit von Plattwürmern begonnen. Willkommen!
• Mitte März organisieren wir einen Workshop des DFG-Nachwuchsakademie OFFSPRing am ZIF.

2013

• Sabrina Polte und Klaus Reinhold haben den Best-Paper-Award 2013 von Plant Species Biology erhalten.
• Ulrike Lampe hat ihre Doktorarbeit zum Thema Effects of anthropogenic noise on male courtship signalling and female response in the grasshopper Chorthippus biguttulus erfolgreich verteidigt. Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Ulli!
• Nils Cordes hat seine Doktorarbeit zum Thema Sexual selection and the causes of behavioural differences erfolgreich verteidigt. Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Nils!
• Steven Ramm erhält Forschungsmittel der DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschft) für die Untersuchung der funktionellen und evolutionsgetische Rolle von Samenflüssigkeit.
• Michael Haneke-Reinders erhält ein Doktorandenstipendium von der Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung.
• Pablo Valverde hat den Posterpreis beim Doktorandentreffen European Meeting of PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology gewonnen.
• Holger Schielzeth erhält den Reviewer-Preis 2013 von der Peerage of Science. Peerage of Science ist eine Online-Service zur Förderung der Qualität des wissenschaftlichen Peer-Reviews. Mehr dazu
• Ein YouTube video stellt ein Projekt vor, an dem unser Department beteiligt war (publiziert in Global Change Biology).
• Ulrike Lampe ist die Gewinnerin des 2012 Haldane Preises der British Ecological Society. Der Preis wird jedes Jahr an den besten wissenschaftlichen Artikel eines jungen Wissenschaftlers/einer jungen Wissenschaftlerin in der Zeitschrift Functional Ecology vergeben. Mehr dazu
• Ein kürzlich erschienener Statistikartikel der Abteilung [Nakagawa & Schielzeth 2013. Meth. Ecol. Evol. 4: 133-142] wurde von der Faculty of 1000 empfohlen. In dieser Artikel diskutieren wir verschiedene Methoden zur Quantifizierung der erklärten Varianz in gemischten Modellen.
• Amy Backhouse von der University of Cambridge ergänzt unsere Abteilung als weitere Technische Assistentin.
• IN DEN MEDIEN: Eine neue Studie [Reinhold & Ramm 2013. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 67: 395-398] hat herausgefunden, dass männliche Laubheuschrecken beim Spermientransfer das Timing bestimmen.
  derStandard | WIRED Science | Science 2.0

2012

• Die populäre, pädagogische Webseite Understanding Evolution der University of California Berkeley nutzt die kürzlich erschienene Studie [Lampe et al. 2012. Funct. Ecol. 26: 1348-1354], um zu erklären wie evolutionsbiologische Forschung in der Praxis aussieht: Grasshoppers change their tune. Is it evolution in action?
• IN DEN MEDIEN: In einer neuen Studie [Lampe et al. 2012. Funct. Ecol. 26: 1348-1354] zeigen wir, dass Heuschrecken ihren Gesang an Autobahnlärm anpassen.
  Pressemitteilung | BBC | NY Times | SPIEGEL Online | Deutschlandradio
• Klaus Reinhold wurde zum Dekan der Fakultät für Biologie der Universität Bielefeld gewählt.
• Steven Ramm's Forschung an der evolutionsökologischen Rolle von Sperminen wird durch ein Career Integration Grant im Rahmen des Marie Curie-Programms der EU gefördert.
• Die von der DFG unterstütze Forschergruppe Reduction of Phenotypic Plasticity in Behaviour by Early Experience, zu der auch ein Projekt der Abteilung für Evolutionsbiologie gehört, wurde für eine weitere Forschungsperiode verlängert.
• Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) fördert als Teil des Emmy-Noether-Programms die Forschung zur Evolution sexueller Ornamente bei Gomphocerus sibiricus unter der Leitung von Holger Schielzeth. Pressemitteilung
• Die neue Abteilungs-Webseite ist nun aktiv.