SFB-TRR 212
News
News
“Under stress, the buffer system is overloaded”
A team led by NC³ members Rascha Sayed and Joachim Kurtz have discovered a mechanism by which ‘hidden’ (cryptic) genetic variations can accelerate evolution. Normally, genetic differences are balanced out by so-called chaperone proteins (e.g. HSP90), which correct faulty protein structures – a buffer system against genetic deviations.
Under stress (e.g. due to environmental changes or climate change), this system becomes overloaded, revealing the hidden genetic differences. These new, previously invisible phenotypes can then have an evolutionary impact – some disadvantageous, others advantageous under certain conditions.
In experiments with red flour beetles, the researchers showed that downregulating HSP90 produced new traits, such as beetles with eyes half the size, which actually showed better fitness under certain light conditions. The study illustrates how hidden genetic diversity can contribute to adaptation and evolution in stressful situations
Rascha Sayed, Özge Şahin, Mohammed Errbii, Reshma, Robert Peuß, Tobias Prüser, Lukas Schrader, Nora K. E. Schulz & Joachim Kurtz (2025): HSP90 as an evolutionary capacitor drives adaptive eye size reduction via atonal. Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65027-0
Self defense training
After a long day of seminars, the NC³ women were able to burn off some energy: our CRC member Mirjam Borgers showed the participants some judo exercises for self-defense. These defensive moves are not only helpful in dangerous everyday situations, but also particularly useful for field work. Thanks Mirjam!
NC³ Seminar with Johanna Mappes
On 31 October 2025, Prof. Dr. Johanna Mappes from the University of Helsinki visited us in Bielefeld. In addition to giving a very interesting lecture on "Looking Dangerous: How Genes and Ecology Shape Warning Signals", Johanna had the opportunity to talk to our CRC members about the research being conducted within NC³ and to get to know our zebra finches and fire salamanders in the lab.
NC³ Retreat 24. - 26.09.2025
This year's retreat took place in Münster and Bielefeld. In addition to the General Assembly and status group meetings, the focus was on scientific exchange between the projects and within our four research clouds.
On the last day of the retreat, we explored OWL and the Teutoburg Forest and hiked from the Hermann Monument to the Extersteine!
Fire salamander and AI
Behavioural Ecologists will be part of GENIALE in Bielefeld
What do fire salamanders and AI have in common? Protecting endangered animals requires careful observation and clever technology. The black and yellow pattern on the back of each salamander is as unique as your fingerprint. A specially trained AI can identify and recognize the pattern from a photo. This is used, for example, to research distribution and population sizes. At interactive stations, you can learn more about fire salamanders and try out the technology. You will find out how you can become an active part of the project yourself.
More information about the Workshop at GENIALE 2025
Smartphone app ‘WAU’ collects data for dog study
Dog owners who would like to support a research project on animal welfare by NC³ and JICE members from the Department of Behavioural Biology at the University of Münster can do so via smartphone – with the ‘WAU app’. This free app allows interested people to record the emotions and behaviour of their dogs. No special knowledge is required. The WAU app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. WAU is a citizen science project at the university on the topic of ‘Emotions, laterality and personality in dogs’.
How reliable are behavioural tests with insects?
A recent study provides evidence that some results of behavioural experiments with insects cannot be fully reproduced. Until now, possible reproducibility problems have been little discussed in this context. A research team from Bielefeld, Münster and Jena, working together in NC³, now shows that behavioural experiments with insects are also affected by the ‘reproducibility crisis’.
Mundinger C, Schulz NKE, Singh P, Janz S, Schurig M, Seidemann J, Kurtz J, Müller C, Schielzeth H, von Kortzfleisch VT, Richter SH (2025): Testing the reproducibility of ecological studies on insect behavior in a multi-laboratory setting identifies opportunities for improving experimental rigor. PLOS Biology 23, e3003019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003019
Innate immune memory influences the evolution of pathogens
Like all vertebrates, humans have two types of immune memory: the memory of the acquired (adaptive) immune system, which is highly specific to certain pathogens and long-lasting and makes vaccinations possible, and that of the innate immune system – a 'trained immunity' – which reacts quickly but less specifically. Invertebrates such as insects only have the innate immune system, but they also possess a form of immunisation through contact with pathogens ('immune priming'). Until now, there has been no study on how the confrontation of pathogens with hosts that have such an activated innate immune system affects the evolution of pathogens, and specifically their 'dangerousness', or virulence. A research team at the University of Münster led by evolutionary biologist Prof Dr Joachim Kurtz has now investigated this for the first time through experimental evolution of an insect pathogen (Bacillus thuringiensis tenebrionis) in red flour beetles. One result: after some time of evolution, the pathogen’s virulence differed significantly between the different bacterial lines. This greater diversity could accelerate the adaptation of pathogens to their hosts.
Korša A, Baur M, Schulz NKE, Anaya-Rojas JM, Mellmann A, Kurtz J (2025): Experimental evolution of a pathogen confronted with innate immune memory increases variation in virulence. PLOS Pathogens 21(6), e1012839. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1012839
Plant chemicals shape animal social lives
A study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology by researchers from Bielefeld University reveals that certain plant compounds, from non-food plants that then affect the social behavior and lifespan of the turnip sawfly (Athalia rosae). Led by Dr. Pragya Singh, a NC³ postdoctoral researcher from the Chemical Ecology group in Bielefeld, the team investigated how the consumption of specific non-nutritional plant-derived chemicals, known as clerodanoids, alters social networks within sawfly populations while simultaneously shortening the insects’ lifespan. These findings provide valuable insights into plant-animal interactions and social networks in ecology.
Singh P, Brueggemann L, Janz S, Saidi Y, Baruah G, Müller C (2024): Plant metabolites modulate social networks and lifespan in a sawfly. Journal of Animal Ecology 93, 1758–1770. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.14189
Social interactions may accelerate evolution
How do animal species develop evolutionarily? Researchers usually predict this by studying a species' genes and the environment in which it lives. However, new research highlights a key factor that is often overlooked: social interactions, in which the genes of other individuals play an important role in shaping the environment an animal experiences. NC³ members Maria Moiron and Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar and researchers from the British Universities of Aberdeen and Exeter collaborated on the study, which was published in Evolution Letters.
Santostefano F, Moiron M, Sánchez-Tójar A, Fisher D (2024): Indirect genetic effects increase the heritable variation available to selection and are largest for behaviours: a meta-analysis. Evolution Letters, qrae051. https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrae051
Press release by Bielefeld University https://aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2024/10/10/soziale-interaktionen-koennten-die-evolution-beschleunigen/
'The debate on animal experiments is anything but nuanced’
In a recent publication, NC³ and JICE members Prof Dr Helene Richter, Prof Dr Melanie Dammhahn and Prof Dr Sylvia Kaiser from the University of Münster and Prof Dr Barbara Caspers from Bielefeld University call for a more nuanced view of animal experiments. In two interviews, they describe which challenges scientists face, why animal experiments are necessary and how a more differentiated assessment of research with and on animals could look like.
Richter SH, Caspers BA, Dammhahn M, Kaiser S (2024): Animal research revisited – the case of behavioural studies. Trends in Ecology & Evolution (TREE), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2024.11.014
Interview with Barbara Caspers (Bielefeld University)
Interview with Helene Richter and Melanie Dammhahn (University of Münster)
Metabolomics Workshop
Our metabolomics workshop offered by the S project and Caroline Müller´s Lab was a great success!
Behaviour 2023 - Registration is open!
You can register for the Behaviour 2023 conference in Bielefeld now!
We are happy to announce that NC³ members Nora Schulz, Jaime Anaya-Rojas and Ane Liv Bethelsen organise a symposium on "Causes and consequences of individualization in behavioural ecology" during the congress.
Find more details on the Behaviour 2023 website!
Walter Benjamin fellowship
Rebecca Nagel has been awarded a Walter Benjamin fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for a period of 2 years. Come January 2022, she will be carrying out research at the University of St. Andrews in the UK in collaboration with Dr. Michael Morrissey. She plans to pair newly collected micro-meteorological data with data from the long-term research project of wild Soay sheep to test the hypothesis that incorporating fine-scale, individual-based environmental conditions into multivariate trait-fitness regression models will produce more robust predictions of selection.
Congratulations, Rebecca, and all the best!
Individualisation Fellowships for Postdocs
The interdisciplinary collaborative project „Individualisation in Changing Environments“ (InChangE) is currently offering a total of 5 Postdoc Fellowships (full-term, salary level TV-L E14) for 18 months at the Universities of Bielefeld and Münster. The disciplines represented in InChangE are biology, philosophy, sociology, economics, psychology, geoinformatics, psychiatry and health sciences.
The fellowships will provide the successful candidates the opportunity to further develop their independent research in the field of individualisation science and to prepare their application for an individual research grant.
Application deadline: 30 November 2022
More details: http://fellowships.jice.info
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact: inchange_koordination@uni-bielefeld.de
Transcriptional profiles in the mouse amygdala
Lena, Marisol and colleagues took a closer look at the effects of genetics and/or gene-environment interactions on emotional cognitive biases. Learn more about the effects of the genetic background and environmental enrichment on the transcriptional profiles of the mouse amygdala in their paper in Front. Mol. Neurosci.
SAVE THE DATE: Behaviour 2023
From 14th to 20th of August 2023 the Behaviour 2023 conference will take place in Bielefeld.
The CRC will organise a symposium on "individualisation" during this conference.
Learn more about the conference and stay up to date here.
Retreat 2022
Finally a personal meeting of the members from the first and second phase of our CRC!
Great exchange and stimulating discussions were on the agenda.
"Tierisch individuell" on stage
The Theaterlabor Bielefeld is creating a stage performance with teenagers from their summer theatre project, inspired by our exhibition "Tierisch individuell". Dr. Sabine Kraus guided the young people through the diversity of the research projects and introduced them to the topic of individuality.
You want to know how the young people put the topic of "individuality" into practice?
Come and see it:
Premiere 05.08. at 7 p.m.
TOR 6 of the theatre
Admission free!
Reservations at: info@theaterlabor.de or Tel.: 0521 / 270 56
Jugendclub // Sommertheater – Bühnenzauber
@theaterlaborbielefeld
@naturkundemuseumbielefeld
BioScience paper out
The concepts cloud paper on the NC3 mechanisms and individualized niches is now out in BioScience! The paper provides a unifying framework and definitions for the NC3 mechanisms and discuss how they affect organism-environment match, fitness, and the individualized niche.
Pia interviewed by Kanal 21
A marvellous interview by Pia on Kanal 21 about her PhD thesis and the software "Amphibian and Reptile Wildbook".
Check out the video on youtube, time slot 19:58-23:11.
20. Nachtansichten - 20th Night Views
It's the night of museums, galleries and churches.
On 30 April from 6 pm to 1 am, many different cultural venues in Bielefeld will open their doors. Our exhibition "Tierisch individuell" will also be part of it!
18.00 – 23.00 Meet the Scientists
You can buy tickets in advance.
Links: Namu Program Bielefeld Marketing
Nature communications paper published
Evolution here and now: Angélique Lamaze and colleagues demonstrate how fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) can maintain their clock function and rhythmic behaviour at northern latitudes. Learn more about the role of the clock gene "timeless", here in the article.
Related links:
Welcome new members!
Welcome to all new NC3 members who have just started or will soon start their projects. We wish you a successful start and look forward to many fruitful discussions.
Exhibition opening at the namu in Bielefeld!
Come and visit our exhibition "Tierisch individuell" at the namu. Discover the research on animals that choose, conform and construct their individual niches!
The exhibition will be on view at the namu from 13 March to 11 September 2022.
The opening of the exhibition will take place on 13.03.2022 from 10-17 h. Entrance is free!
Workshop: Individual recognition software Wildbook
Using crowdsourced images to enable continuous and automated monitoring of both population size and geographic range of amphibians and reptiles to establish effective conservation plans - sounds like a dream?
Within project A04, a software called Amphibian and Reptile Wildbook has been developed to do just that.
More information on the Wildbook project can be found on the homepage.
On Saturday, 05.03.2022, a workshop will be held to introduce this software. The workshop will be held in German. Here you find the program.
Cortisol levels and domiance rank
Cortisol response to an acute challenge is known to be repeatable and correlated with social behaviour in males of many mammalian species. Taylor Rystrom and colleagues have now investigated whether these patterns are also consistent in female guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus).
Take a look at what Taylor and her colleagues discovered, here.
Behavioral Ecology paper on the effects of clerodanoids out
An inspiring study in which Sarah Paul & Caroline Müller demonstrate the importance and potential of studying agonistic intersexual interactions over non-reproductive resources. Learn more about the agonistic nibbling behaviour of turnip sawfly (Athalia rosae) here.
Collaborative research center on the individual niche has been extended
We are very happy to announce that our "NC³" enters its second funding phase. Over the next four years, we will continue to work in an interdisciplinary team of philosophers, theoretical biologists, statisticians, ecologists, evolutionary and behavioral biologists, to define and establish the niche concept at the level of the individual and to understand the ecological and evolutionary consequences.
New job announcements can be found here: NC³
Related links:
Visit us at the Museum of Natural History in Münster!
We are very, very proud to present "Tierisch individuell", an exhibition all about animals chosing, conforming to and constructing their individual niches!
Update: The exhibition at the LWL-Museum für Naturkunde in Münster ended in October. "Tierisch individuell" will open again at the namu/Naturkundemuseum in Bielefeld in March 2022!
ERC Starting Grant
Congratulations to Toni Gossmann! He has won the European Research Council's prestigious Starting Grant. Toni will use this to continue unravelling the mysteries of DNA methylation, and how these can be inherited. We are thrilled and are looking forward to the next years working with Toni.
Paper on code availability draws wide attention
75% of ecological journals require code-sharing, but only 27% of articles comply with this rule, as a recent paper by Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar and colleagues recently showed. This result is now being widely shared and discussed.
Collaborative TREE paper out!
The conceptual paper from the NC³ cloud on molecular and physiological mediators has been published. For everything you want to know on the importance on infochemicals for choosing, conforming to and constructing of individualised niches, and for highly useful definitions of terms all around NC³!
Odyssey home
Corona has shut many doors - especially those of airports. We are very glad to have Rebecca Nagel back from her field trip to the Antarctic. Her journey home took 75 days, as she recently told the Bielefelder Zeitung.
Researching to improve animal welfare
Looking for an excellent in-depth science podcast (in German)? Hear Helene Richter explain recent developments on the 3 R (replace, reduce, refine) of animal use in research.
Helene covers a wide range of this fascinating topic in great detail, from the numbers of animals used in science and food production and the laws regulating this use, to the problem of reproducibility and current trends in animal welfare research. Head to WWUcast to listen.
Hormones may teach an old guinea pig new tricks
Group-living requires different social skills than living in pairs. Advantageous behavioural types developed under such different social conditions are regulated by hormones. Alexandra Mutwill and colleagues have now been able to show that guinea pig males can readjust their hormonal setup according to a new social situation even in adulthood.
Open synthesis attracts more attention
The open synthesis revolution continues! Alfredo Sánchez Tójar talked to Hertz 87,9 about the reproducibility crisis and the revolutionary solution he and others recently suggested.
Norbert Sachser's book in award-winning project at WWU
Münster University will see an exciting series of public events in the next winter term. A lecture series, discussion forum and poetry, art and science slams will all focus on animal behaviour, based on Norbert Sachser's recent book "Der Mensch im Tier" (The human animal). This is part of the "Eine Uni - ein Buch" (One university - one book) initiative of the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft. Münster University was one of ten to win the competition this year. This will be a great opportunity to discuss all things animal behaviour and animal welfare with the public. We are very much looking forward to all the events!
Re-thinking the scientific environment for faster, safer results
Literature reviews and meta-analyses have long been plagued by publication bias and other problems. This week, Dr Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar and 21 co-authors published a far-reaching suggestion to revolutionise the way primary researchers and synthesists work. They suggest creating open synthesis communities where primary researchers and synthesists work hand in hand, and where synthesis is recognized as the end goal and updated continuously. "Bridging the divide between primary researchers and synthesists will lead to less research waste, more collaboration, faster research progress and better engagement."
