Centre for Molecular Biodiversity Research (zmb)

Funding:

Leibniz Association

SynSex - Sexual selection and sexual conflict in Syngnathidae

Selection acts differently on males and females and drives their phenotypic dissimilarities. Most research has focused on males and how sexual selection shapes their ornaments and weaponry in the context of gaining access to female mates. This is not least due to the fact that humans, as most other vertebrates, show "conventional", "Darwinian" sex roles concentrating our perception on competitive males and caring mothers.

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

2022

BGE - Biodiversity Genomics Europe

Project lead:

Funding:

European Union

phenotypic loss in bees - the evolution of cleptoparasitism

Project lead:

Radula properties in marine Heterobranchia

Marine Heterobranchia are known for their trophic specialisation, which has an impact on the radular morphology and their properities.

Project lead:

DeRGA - Deutscher ReferenzGenom Atlas

German hub of the European Reference Genome AtlasBuilding up to the mission of the international ERGA, the German biodiversity genomics community aims at generating high-quality reference genomes of the German eukaryotic biodiversity:

Project lead:

Dr. Camilla Bruno Di Nizo

CellGen

The CellGen project is composed of two main parts. The first part investigates whether cell cultures accumulate mutations with progressive number of passages. One of the advantages of cell culture is to provide best quality of DNA/RNA and metaphases. Hence, we expect that cell culture will experience a renaissance in the light of high throughput sequencing techniques. However, it is still not clear how the number of passages (i.e., the number of times cells are transferred from vessel to vessel) can affect genetic and chromosomal composition.

Project lead:

phenotypic loss - the evolution of stingless bees

Project lead:

ERGA - The European Referen...

The European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) initiative is a pan-European scientific response to current threats to biodiversity. Reference genomes provide the most complete insight into the genetic basis that forms each species and represent a powerful resource in understanding how biodiversity functions. ERGA aims to sequence the genomes of all European species and will for this establish an interdisciplinary workflow.

Project lead:

Funding:

European Union

ColLomic

High-quality genomes are an important basis for biological and evolutionary research. However, generating assemblies of high completeness and contiguity requires ideally fresh, flash-frozen samples. The availability of such samples has become a major limitation for biodiversity genomics, in particular for rare or endangered species, or species inhabiting remote regions. On the other hand, museum collections house millions of samples in Germany and worldwide.

Project lead:

Funding:

Leibniz Association

2021

Sex chromosomes in African cichlid fishes

The mechanisms of sex determination are diverse despite their unifying function in defining male and female sex within a species. They range from an array of environmental factors over different genetic sex determination systems to a complex interplay of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. These mechanisms are ultra-conserved in some organismal groups (e.g. all mammals share the same sex chromosomal system), however, in other groups even sister species vary in their way how sex is determined.

Project lead:

Funding:

European Union, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

NFDI4Biodiversity

NFDI4Biodiversity – NFDI Consortium for Biodiversity, Ecology and Environmental DataNFDI4Biodiversity is a consortium under the umbrella of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) dedicated to the mobilising biodiversity and environmental data for collective use.The partners pool their scientific and technical expertise to provide a broad service portfolio for handling biodiversity and environmental data and to develop it further in close cooperation with users from research and practice.

Project lead:

Dr. Peter Grobe

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

CORBICULA

Humandkind's most important insect leg

Project lead:

Funding:

European Union

The Caribbean Metalmark butterfly

Metalmarks butterflies, Riodinidae, are one of the six butterfly families. Most of its 1300 species are Neotropical, however, a single monotypic genus inhabits the West Indies. The Caribbean Metalmark, Dianesia carteri, is restricted Cuba and the Bahamas where several isolated populations are known. A first approach using barcodes suggest that Dianesia may comprise more than one species. The project will sample several populations using NGS data to compare them and reassess their taxonomic status.

Project lead:

Dr. Rayner Nuñez

Funding:

Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation

thelytoky in honeybees

Genomische Langzeitkonsequenzen thelytoker VermehrungVerluste von HeterozygotieAssociative ÜberdominanzGenomische Regulation von Thelytokie in Honigbienen

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Hybrid swarm evolution in minnows

In biodiversity research, little is known so far about how hybridizations of a native and a non-native species can lead to the evolution of an invasive hybrid. A group of researchers led by Dr Madlen Stange is now studying this aspect in a project at the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig – Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity (ZFMK). The group is investigating the spread of Phoxinus, an ecologically important schooling fish, in the River Sieg, a 155 km tributary of the River Rhine.

Project lead:

Dr. Madlen Stange

Funding:

Leibniz Association

The impact of mutualistic and parasitic life histories on butterfly diversification in an increasingly arid world

Understanding the mechanisms leading to diversification of species across time in a changing world remains a challenge. Africa was largely covered by forests until the middle Oligocene, when geological and climatic changes led to increasing aridification of the landmass. The current, iconic savanna and grassland ecosystems did not become well-established until around 8 million years ago. The effect of this increasing aridification on diversification has not been well-studied in animals, and especially not in insects.

Project lead:

Dr. Marianne Espeland

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Bumblebee Phenotypic Evolution

Bumblebee Phenotypic Evolution - We will study phenotypic evolution in bumblebees, repeatability of evolution and evolutionary constraints using genomics and transcriptomics.

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Genomic technology for the Caucasus

It is planned to undertake 1) a comprehensive upgrade of researchinfrastructure in the molecular ecology laboratory at ISU, and 2) ajoint research investigation of biodiversity and refugial areas in the Caucasus region. Improvements to research infrastructure will providemodern biotechnology to researchers in the Caucasus region, including next generation sequencing (NGS) and real time PCR.

Project lead:

Provenance research at the Museum Koenig

The animals exhibited in the Museum Koenig are mostly representative of their respective species. However, some exhibits have an exciting story to tell, for example because they come from a famous collector or only came to the Museum Koenig in Bonn via detours. The aim of the project is to find out the special stories of individual specimens in the museum's exhibitions and to write them down in order to make them accessible to a broader public, for example in the form of popular science publications or as part of museum educational programs.

Project lead:

Dr. André Koch

Funding:

Alexander-Koenig-Society e.V.

Biodiversity Processing HUB™

How to overcome this recent biodiversity dilemma and speed up the availability of material with undescribed diversity?!?

Project lead:

Björn Rulik

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

2020

CaBOL - Caucasus Barcode of Life

A Georgian-Armenian-German initiative to build research infrastructures and to explore and barcode the biodiversity of the Caucasus

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Utilizing environmental genomics to study multiple agricultural stressor impacts on stream invertebrates and ecosystem functions

Der Verlust an Biodiversität nimmt rasant zu und hat nachteilige Folgen für Ökosystemfunktionen und -dienstleistungen. Hiervon sind in besonderer Weise Fließgewässer betroffen. Zu den wichtigsten Ursachen des Biodiversitätsverlustes in Fließgewässern gehören landwirtschaftliche Stressoren, wie z.B. Pestizide. Pestizide sind allerdings selten alleiniger Stressor, sondern wirken oft zusammen mit anderen Stressoren wie z.B. einem gesteigerten Feinsedimenteintrag aus Ackerflächen. Interaktionen solch multipler Stressoren können zu komplexen nichtlinearen Stressantworten führen.

Project lead:

Dr. Christoph Mayer

KennArt

The number of taxonomists decreases. Within project "KennArt - A nationwide initiative for the qualification of taxonomists" (2020-2026), the NABU-Naturschutzstation Münsterland and the Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring and Conservation Science of the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig try to stop this trend. Over six years, a modul based system with basic, advanced and expert courses for various organism groups with a focus on insects will be developed and tested in Germany.

Project lead:

Albia Consul

Funding:

Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, Federal Agency for Natur Conservation

GBOL III: Dark Taxa

The BMBF-funded GBOL, the German Barcode of Life initiative, has been run successfully over the last eight years. It delivered an operative DNA barcode reference library for German animals, fungi and plants. However, a significant proportion of insect taxa has so far been excluded from GBOL and merely all biodiversity research, because no or only very insufficient expertise and information are available that allow to get a grip on them. They are called “Dark Taxa”.

Project lead:

Dr. Ralph S. Peters

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

2019

FOGS - Forensic Genetics for Species Protection

The FOGS project develops DNA-based tools to combat illegal trade in protected animal species.

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Effects of land use and climate change on Ethiopian francolins

In this project we study two Ethiopian francolin species, focusing on proper conservation and land use management.

Project lead:

Abadi Mehari Abrha

Funding:

German Academic Exchange Service

Bombus terrestris genome

Using long read sequencing of DNA and RNA we will improve the genome sequence assembly and annotation of the bufftailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris.

Project lead:

Funding:

European Union

Defense systems of Chromodorididae

Chromodorididae is a sea slug group known for the most colorful members. The aposematic coloration is usually discussed in the light of their toxicity. While feeding on sponges, they take up the toxic compounds and store them in special structures along the notum margin. They are used as defense against predators, like fish or crabs. We investigate the evolution and efficiency of these so-called mantle dermal formations within Chromodorididae

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research, German Academic Exchange Service

Joint Danube Survey

JDS monitors key water quality elements (including biodiversity) for the length of the Danube River and its major tributaries.

Project lead:

APPETITE

APPETITE is a new automated process-pipeline for molecular phylogenetic purposes with nearly endless analytical possibilities. APPETITE

Project lead:

DNA barcoding of benthic invertebrates from Lake Sevan (Armenia)

Building a reference database of DNA barcodes for the Lake Sevan drainage basin

Project lead:

Funding:

German Academic Exchange Service

End biodiversity loss through improved tracking of threatened invertebrates

In today’s biodiversity crisis, there is an urgent need to monitor terrestrial and aquatic species in their natural habitats, especially those that may be endangered, invasive or elusive. Traditional species observation methods, based on acoustic or observational surveys are inefficient, costly and time consuming. On the other hand, DNA is continuously deposited in the environment from natural processes and this environmental DNA (eDNA) allows us to detect species and reconstruct their communities with a high level of sensitivity.

Project lead:

Dr. Sarah Bourlat

Evolution of Ninetinae

This project focuses on the spider subfamily Ninetinae, tiny cryptic ground-dwellers that are largely restricted to arid habitats. They seem to be ‘basal’ within Pholcidae and thus crucial for reconstructing the evolutionary history of the family.

Project lead:

Dr. Bernhard A. Huber

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

SYNTHESYS+ NA3.1

SYNTHESYS+ subproject NA3.1 collects existing standards and practices in the biodiversity biobanking community and identifies gaps.

Project lead:

Funding:

European Union

2018

Establishing a standardized and universally applicable set of nuclear-encoded markers for genome-wide multi-locus species delimitation of metazoans

Methods for delimiting species based on multi-gene nucleotide information are well established and provide the means to complement the classical COI barcoding approach, whose limitations are well known. Our research project aims at establishing a standardized set of single-copy nuclear-encoded markers for genome-wide multi-locus species delimitation by exploiting comparative genomic data and applying target DNA enrichment. Candidate markers are so-called Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (USCOs).

Project lead:

Dr. Dirk Ahrens

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Biodiversity of Phyllidiidae in Indonesia

Phyllidiidae is one of the most common sea slug groups in tropical marine habitats. Because of their colors and wide distribution, they are well known to divers. They are also of interest for pharmaceutical research because of their toxic compounds, which they extract from their sponge food. However, little is known about their relationships and especially cryptic speciation within the genera and species. We investigate the biodiversity of these sea slugs in North Sulawesi (Indonesia) and try to clarify the pyhlogenetic relationships within some genera.

Project lead:

Sherlock

Sherlock is an automated process pipeline for statistical evaluation of patristic tree-distance variation given partitioned or non-partitioned molecular sequence data.

Project lead:

Apollo population genomics

Parnassius apollo (Papilionidae) is an iconic butterfly species with a wide distribution from Spain to China. The distribution is, however, very spotwise, and e.g. in Germany only a few populations remain. It is the only non-tropical butterfly protected under the CITES The goal of this project is to use whole genome sequencing to investigate the genetic diversity of Parnassius apollo across space and time. To do this we will use both fresh and museum specimens collected across the range of the species, and during the last 120 years.

Project lead:

Dr. Marianne Espeland

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

ISBER Best Practices: Recommendations for Repositories

Guidance for the collection, handling, storage, and distribution of biological and environmental samples

Project lead:

Cell banking at the LIB Biobank

ZFMK Biobank archives viable cell material for research and ex-situ conservation.

Project lead:

Biodiversityof marine Heterobranchia in North Sulawesi, Indonesia

Together with Indonesian colleagues from Sam Ratulangi University, Manado, we are investigating the species composition of marine Heterobranchia in North Sulawesi and jointly publishing the results.

Project lead:

Prof. Dr. J. Wolfgang Wägele

Funding:

German Academic Exchange Service, German Federal Environmental Foundation, Alexander-Koenig-Society e.V.

Plant-pollinator networks in agro-ecosystems

Pollination is crucial for maintaining angiosperm biodiversity and represents one of the most important ecosystem services. With the increasing threats of massive insect decline, studying pollination and associated networks has become more important than ever. In this study, we target the plant-pollinator networks of two important crops (caraway and apple) using a combination of traditional methods with DNA barcoding and metabarcoding.

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

2017

GGBC: Assessment, Monitoring and Management of Caucasian Biodiversity

A Georgian-German initiative to explore and barcode the biodiversity of the Caucasus area

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

AG RICEFISH

The focus of the proposed research group is to study the link between genotype and phenotype of evolutionary adaptive traits, a vital question of evolutionary biology in the postgenomic era. The group will study the morphological and genomic basis of a unique reproduction strategy in Sulawesi ricefishes (Actinopterygii: Adrianichthyidae) called “pelvic brooding”. In pelvic brooding species, females carry the eggs in an abdominal concavity until they hatch, which is assumed to be an adaptation to a predominantly pelagic lifestyle.

Project lead:

Dr. Julia Schwarzer

Funding:

Leibniz Association

Sequencing museum material

In this project we investigate how we efficiently can use old, dried, museum materil for phylogenomic studies. A hybrid enrichment kit for Lepidoptera is being designed and first test are promising, indicating that hundreds of genes can be successfully seqeunced for over 130 year old material.

Project lead:

Dr. Marianne Espeland

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

Evolution of Dexiarchia

The sea slugs of the subgroup Dexiarchia comprise at least 2,000 different species and many more undescribed members. Until today there exists no phylogenetic analysis of Dexiarchia that comprises all major families and corroborates the relationships within this group, which is the aim of our project.

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Optimizing and standardizing the preservation of animal tissue for molecular biodiversity research

Towards establishing a clearer, comparative perspective on some of the most commonly used preservation/fixation fluids in zoological biobanking.

Project lead:

Subject-related University Partnership

Upgrade of an International subprogram (Indopacific Coral Reef Biodiversity and Conservation, IPCRBC) within the local Master program Aquatic Science at Sam Ratulangi University, Manado in order to prepare it for a Double Degree Master program with University of Bonn and Bremen and thus strengthening existing cooperation between teaching partners UNSRAT, ZFMK and ZMT with regard to future collaborations

Project lead:

Dr. Katharina Schmidt-Loske

Funding:

German Academic Exchange Service

2016

The collections - a cosmos

Maria Gräfin von Linden became the first woman to be made a titular Professor in Germany in 1910

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

3D AMP

This plugin works with ImageJ and Fiji. You can use most kinds of (hyper)stacks with one or more channels in the commonimage formats.

Project lead:

Jörg Adrian

Biodiversity of Heterobranc...

Biodiversity of marine heterobranchs of South Iranian shore lines and the Persian Gulf

Project lead:

Funding:

Alexander-Koenig-Society e.V.

2015

Sound library of the Western Rock Nuthatch

In this project, we are creating high-quality sound libraries to facilitate the subsequent development of an automated sound recognizer for the Western Rock Nuthatch Sitta neumayer.

Project lead:

Dr. Till Töpfer

Funding:

Alexander-Koenig-Society e.V.

Opisthobranch Biodiversity in Indonesia

The Indonesian coastline is characterized by an extremely high biodiversity. This project focusses on a specific bio-system, i.e. Opisthobranchia, their prey organisms, and the associated microorganisms. Based on our knowledge on systematics and ecology of these organisms, the final goal is to identify new drug leads for antibiotics development in a cooperation with colleagues from the Pharmaceutical Biology of the university of Bonn. Sea slugs, forced by the absence of a protective shell, developed highly specialized defense strategies to protect their sensitive epidermis against micro and small organisms, as well as larger predators like fish and crabs. Especially chemical substances fulfill this protective role.

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

2014

Countering Systematic Bias in Phylogenetics

PhyQuart, a new algorithm combining Hennigian logic and Maximum Likelihood estimation, represents a completely new strategy for the evaluation of molecular data based on a site pattern classification for quartets of aligned sequences.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, European Union

Immunobiology of the marine…

Investigation of the innate immune system of the heterobranch genus Aplysia.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

Evolution of defense strategies in sea slugs

Sea slugs have lost their protective shell and evolved alternative defense strategies against predators (toxins, acids, needles, etc). We investigate these strategies

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Evolution of Photosynthesis in Sacoglossa

The loss of the shell in sea slugs enabled the evolution of photosynthetic capability within some groups, but also enforced the evolution of alternative defense strategies. We investigate the origin and efficiency of these various strategies.

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Alexander-Koenig-Society e.V.

Incorporation of chloroplasts in Sacoglossa

Some sea slugs incorporate chloroplasts from their algal food in their own body and perform photosynthesis with these „cleptoplastids“. They survive weeks to months without any further food uptake.

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Bumbuna Phase II Project

Baseline Study and Ecological Monitoring before and after the inundation of the Bumbuna Hydroelectric Project Reservoir.

Project lead:

Dr. Jan Decher

Funding:

Combined Ecology, BTO Services Ltd., UK

Island speciation within the…

Landsnails of the genus Theba show an endemic radiation on the Canary Islands and the adjacent West African Continent.

Project lead:

ESBB & ISBER Enviro-Bio Working Group

The Enviro-Bio Working Group is a collaboration of biodiversity biobanks within ISBER and ESBB, the international and European biobanking societies.

Project lead:

2013

GFBio

Environmental and biological research is becoming central to major societal challenges related to the Earth’s ecosystems and climate dynamics. To handle the scale and complexity of the scientificquestions being addressed, there is a strong need to integrate knowledge because biological data are currently scattered and difficult to share.

Project lead:

Dr. Peter Grobe

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Gene repertoire Characterization

Comparative genomics is in its infancy. Genome sequencing just now generates the data to compare not only model organisms and vertebrates but to actually assess biodiversity. Explaining biodiversity relies on an understanding of underlying mechanisms of genome evolution, which in turn is based on a thorough knowledge of genomic characters and the driving forces shaping them.

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

FASconCAT-G: extensive alignment preparations

FASconCAT-G offers a wide range of possibilities to edit and concatenate multiple nucleotide, amino acid, and structure sequence alignment files for phylogenetic and population genetic purposes. The main options include sequence renaming, file format conversion, sequence translation, consensus generation of predefined sequence blocks, and RY coding as well as site exclusions in nucleotide sequences and the generation of partitioned files for MrBayes and RAxML analyses.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

AliGROOVE – visualization of heterogeneous sequence divergence

AliGROOVE determines and visualizes the content of potentially randomized sequence similarities and alignment ambiguities in multiple sequence alignments.The AliGROOVE algorithm is an adaptation of the recently published ALISCORE masking algorithm (Misof & Misof, 2009, Kück et al., 2010). AliGROOVE summarizes site scores of profiles of sequence similarity normalized over the whole alignment length from each pairwise comparison and translates the obtained scoring distances between sequences into a similarity Matrix

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

BaCoCa – assessment of sequence biases

BaCoCa is designed to perform multiple statistical analyses on multiple nucleotide and amino-acid sequence alignments. The results of the BaCoCa analyses can be used for a detailed and statistical comprehensive data evaluation. Furthermore, the results can help to identify phylogenetic sequence biases which can lead to incorrect tree reconstructions.The program can handle hundreds of user specified gene and taxon partitions of a single sequence input file in one process run. BaCoCa is a command-line driven program written in Perl and works on WindowsPCs, Macs and Linux running systems.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

2012

Identification of sources of error in molecular phylogenetic analyses

The aim of our study was to test the robustness and efficiency of maximum likelihood with respect to different long branch effects on multiple-taxon trees.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

Phylogenetic position of…

Project lead:

Dr. Torsten Struck

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Leaf beetles - Chrysomelidae

Transcriptome analysis of leaf beetles.

Project lead:

Funding:

University of Hamburg

Frozen Ark Project

Network for ex-situ conservation of molecular biodiversity

Project lead:

Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN)

Establishing standards for the preservation of molecular samples and molecular biodiversity.

Project lead:

1KITE: The evolution of the insects

Insects are one of the most species-rich groups of metazoan organisms. They play a pivotal role in most non-marine ecosystems and many insect species are of enormous economical and medical importance. Unraveling the evolution of insects is essential for understanding how life in terrestrial and limnic environments evolved. The 1KITE (1K Insect Transcriptome Evolution) project aims to study the transcriptomes (that is the entirety of expressed genes) of 1,000 insect species encompassing all recognized insect orders. For each species, so-called ESTs (Expressed Sequence Tags) will be produced…

Project lead:

2011

Molecular Weevil Identification

DNA barcoding the European weevil fauna and building molecular and morphological weevil collections

Project lead:

Prof. Dr. J. Wolfgang Wägele

GBOL- German Barcode of Life

"German Barcode of Life" ( GBOL ) is a project sponsored by the BMBF and includes the creation of inventories for the gentic characterization of the animals, fungi and plants of germany, using DNA-Barcodes.

Project lead:

Funding:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Sacoglossa-Evolution of their…

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

AnnEvol - Evolution and…

Project lead:

Dr. Torsten Struck

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Trachysphaera Dwarf Pill Millipedes in the UK

Less than 30 years ago, an isolated population of thwe dwarf pill millipede genus Trachysphaera was discovered on the English Isle of Wight, which were tentatively identified as T. lobata (Ribaut, 1954), albeit male specimens were lacking (Joes & Keay 1986 ). T. lobata is a species known mainly from SE France (Kime & Enghoff 2011), and is difficult to distinguish from four other little known Trachysphaera species occurring at the Spanish-French border, which are above all the very similar T. pyrenaica (Ribaut, 1907), as well as the little known T. rousseti (Demange, 1959), T.

Project lead:

Dr. Thomas Wesener

FREDIE - Freshwater Diversity…

Freshwater Diversity Identification for Europe: Barcoding all European freshwater fishes, freshwater molluscs and mayflies.

Project lead:

PD Dr. Fabian Herder

Funding:

Leibniz Association

Fluoreszenzmicroscopical and…

Project lead:

Funding:

Alexander Koenig Stiftung, Alexander-Koenig-Society e.V.

Automated masking of AFLP markers

AMARE is designed to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio in AFLP data sets (single or multiple primer combinations). It identifies potentially erroneous AFLP genotyping errors as the number of non-reproducible scored markers between replicated AFLP profiles of single individuals. As a measure of overall data quality, it simultaneously estimates general replicate error rates.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

2010

The evolution of…

We try to reconstruct a robust backbone tree of holometabolous insects based on extensive transcriptome/genome data. With our transcriptome data we cover all orders within these group of insects and optimize the procedures of tree inference based on these data. Additionally, Rolf Beutel's group is providing extensive 3D morphological data of head, thorax and abdominal structures. Together we are working on the most extensive morphological and molecular data addressing the above mentioned phylogenetic questions. Within this project we have also started to specifically address the "Strepsiptera…

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

FASconCAT - convenient handling of data matrices

FASconCAT is a user-friendly software that concatenates rapidly different kinds of sequence data into one supermatrix file.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

2009

The legacy of the Southern Ocean

Project lead:

Dr. Christoph Mayer

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

ALISCORE - Masking of Multiple Sequence Alignments

Random similarity of sequences or sequence sections can impede phylogenetic analyses or the identification of gene homologies.

Project lead:

Funding:

Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

MITOS

A metazoan mitochondrial genome annotation server.

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Academic Exchange Service, University of Strasbourg, ANR MITOMOT, Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation

2008

Sacoglossa

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

2007

Secondary Metabolites of…

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

DNA Bank Network

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Diversification in space and…

Project lead:

Funding:

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Integrative taxonomy in cryptic weevils

Integrative taxonomy and DNA barcoding in western Palearctic weevils of the subfamily Cryptorhynchinae

Project lead: