June 2024: One more congratulation to Lei et al, publishing their exciting findings to Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02439-z
In "a somatic genetic clock for clonal species" they have developed a new way to estimate the age of clonal organisms, which are species that can reproduce by creating copies of themselves. This method, called a "somatic genetic clock," works by measuring genetic changes that accumulate over time in the organism's cells, allowing researchers to estimate ages of up to 1,403 years for some eelgrass populations.
June 2024: Did you know how diverse seagrass is? It's definitely not just any weed floating around... this was made as an overview for presentations for Thorsten Reusch of GEOMAR.
Summer 2024: Some illustrations for the great story map on seagrass mapping and monitoring, prepared from Anne Hennke at GEOMAR. You can access the story map here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4bb6734dd5e54b5aba57ed56f39022e5
September 2023: Graphical abstract for new research for the Hoving - Lab at GEOMAR: It is not yet known how the climate crisis is affecting the food web and ecosystem dynamics in the northernmost parts of the world.
July 2023: Update for Valoo: They went online and asked me to design some small icons to navigate through their homepage, that you can find here: https://va-loo.ch/de/
July 2023: Congratulations to Lei Yu et al for these fantastic results published in Nature.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-023-01464-3
Ocean currents, glaciations, and sea-level changes have shaped the distribution of marine coastal species, including eelgrass (Zostera marina L.), the most widespread marine flowering plant. Genetic analysis reveals that eelgrass originated in the Northwest Pacific and colonized the Atlantic through the Canadian Arctic about 243,000 years ago, with subsequent spread to the Mediterranean 44,000 years ago and recolonization of Atlantic shores after the Last Glacial Maximum, raising concerns about the adaptability of Atlantic eelgrass populations to climate change due to their lower genetic diversity
January 2023: Happy new year!
I started this year with designing a graphical abstract for Dr. Dorothee Hodapp, showing how climate change disrupts core habitats of marine species that was published in Global Change Biology and can be accessed here.
The authors of the study found that driven by climate change the marine biodiversity is undergoing a phase of rapid change that has proven to be even faster than changes observed in terrestrial ecosystems. They analyse more than 33,500 marine species under three CO2 emission scenarios up to the year 2100. Core habitats will decline for many species, resulting in a loss of 50% of the core habitat area for almost half of all marine species under the high-emission scenario.
November 2022: Great collaboration with VaLoo Switzerland. In this cool project I have illustrated the circular sanitation network that VaLoo is proposing for Switzerland to "create value from what ends up in the loo" :-)
Additionally, some small parts of the infographic ended up in their brand new homepage.
May 2022
Experimental Evolution with Yeast: the Stelkens Lab published a new cool paper where they discuss how the instability of hybrid genomes determines fitness across large evolutionary scales, highlight new hybrid strain engineering techniques, and review tools for comparative hybrid genome analysis.
They take the yeast to where the wild things are!
February 2022: Graphical abstract showing how environmental stressors are affecting fish immune response. Check out the new review paper soon!
Winter 20/21: New Look for the Kiel Science Factory! Some of the educational topics ranging from marine biology to archaeology can now be found as sprayed murals! Have a look - you can find them at the botanical garden Kiel.
October 2021: Babycard - hello little baby Lilith! Sprayed with Montana Cans on paper.
December 2021: Graphical summary for the new publication of Franke et al. discussing how real-word laboratories as new method can support a sustainable ocean development.
September 2021: Visualizations for the opinion paper of Reusch, Baums and Werner: Evolution via somatic genetic variation in modular species
published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2021.08.011
June 2021: Illustration for the DFO-WMU Empowering Women Programme, which was endorsed as an ocean decade action by IOC-UNESCO.
Great news from the World Maritime University (WMU):
"The World Maritime University’s (WMU) research and capacity building programme on Empowering Women for the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Empowering Women Programme) has been endorsed as a Decade Action of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Decade). The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (IOC-UNESCO) announced the endorsement on World Oceans Day, 8 June 2021."
More information here: https://www.wmu.se/news/dfo-wmu-empowering-women-programme-endorsed-as-an-ocean-decade-action-by-the-ioc-unesco
March 2021: Day - Night migration and reproduction of three cephalopod species. Also showing the food web interactions between ocean and land species.
How fascinating is the lifestyle of these beautiful creatures ?!
What a crazy year 2020!
I created this Christmas & New Year card showing a pangolin, hangin' in there.
Sadly, pangolins are the most illegally traded wildlife globally.
December 2020: Jellyfish research: showing the different interactions between the different ocean players.
Published in this nice review article: Review of jellyfish trophic interactions in the Baltic Sea
by Ina Stoltenberg et al in Marine Biology Research
Graphical abstract for applied microbiology: holistic approach to identify colonies that can be used in biotechnological applications.
Illustrations to show how important (and underestimated!) the habitat "seagrass" (Zostera marina) is:
1. Higher biodiversity within seagrass meadows
2. Shelter for young fish
3. Coastal protection: seagrass slows down wave power
4. Climate protection: absorption of CO2 and agricultural nutrients
"The death of clonal species": This graphical summary shows how a clonal species, like seagrass changes its allele frequency over time due to (sometimes deadly mutations). A: Experimental Set-up. B and C: concept of relative abundance over time.
Graphical abstract to visualize how flux attenuation differs depending on the organisms living in the oxygen minimum zone. On the right side zooplankton communities lead to a higher flux attenuation.
Seagrass research illustrations: Seagrass propagates via underground rhizomes (roots). For evolutionary biologists, it is crucial to know how exactly the genetic information is passed on to the new plants and what effects mutations can have on an entire population.
Yu, L., Boström, C., Franzenburg, S. et al. Somatic genetic drift and multilevel selection in a clonal seagrass. Nat Ecol Evol (2020).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1196-4
Graphical summary for the interdisciplinary publication on the perspectives of integrative marine protection by Franke et al. 2020, published in One Earth. doi: 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.05.013
Operationalizing Ocean Health: Toward Integrated Research on Ocean Health and Recovery to Achieve Ocean Sustainability
HTTPS://WWW.CELL.COM/ONE-EARTH/FULLTEXT/S2590-3322(20)30249-9
Visualizations on the evolution of male pregnancy in seahorses and pipefishes. Published in PNAS April 28, 2020 117 (17) 9431-9439; first published April 13, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916251117
Roth et al. (2020): Evolution of male pregnancy associated with remodeling of canonical vertebrate immunity in seahorses and pipefishes
Graphical abstract and experimental setup for the publication of Melanie Heckwolf et al. 2020 in Science Advances:
Two different epigenetic information channels in wild three-spined sticklebacks are involved in salinity adaptation
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/12/eaaz1138
Graphical abstract on the microbiota of C.elegans and how this can protect against infections.
Published for Kissoyan et al. in Current Biology 2019: Natural C. elegans Microbiota Protects against Infection via Production of a Cyclic Lipopeptide of the Viscosin Group
September 2018: Mural painting for the Forschungswerkstatt Kiel: "How is knowledge generated?" (4m x 2.5m)
Graphical abstract for research proposal for Prof. Reusch GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Visual abstract to explain the interaction of hormones and the immune system in male pregnancy in pipefishes.
Cool project by Dr. Yasmin Appelhans:
I am Meta - humans, animals, plants & their microbial co-inhabitants
Yasmin was writing a magazine for students to introduce them to the topic of the "meta-organism"here you can see one part of it: the science comic: Meta and the secret of sponges
Graphical abstract for the publication by Dr. Olivia Roth: "Trans-generational plasticity in response to immune challenge is constrained by heat stress" in Evolutionary Applications (2017).
Natural Environment of C. elegans
Published in:
The Natural Biotic Environment of Caenorhabditis elegans
Short animated video on the findings of my PhD thesis
Global warming of the ocean increases tar risk of Vibrio infection in pipefish (Syngnathus typhle). In healthy condition they favor warm water, as this increases their reproductive success. However, if infected with Vibrio bacteria, pipefish show a counterintuitive behavior and actively choose cooler waters. The chance of getting infected is smaller and immune response functions better in cooler water. This illustration shows in a simple way how complex scientific relationships can be presented in an appealing and easily understandable way.
The illustration is based on the research results described in:
Landis et al. 2012: Behavioral adjustments of a pipefish to bacterial Vibrio challenge. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 66:1399-1405.
In this illustration the most common species of animals are visualised in a seagrass meadow. It also contains the information that seagrass reproduces clonally through underground roots (rhizomes).
Children's book "Mads Swordfish": Mads loses his sword in the ocean. Who helps him find it?
Illustration and animation of the volunteer project 2015 "Geschichten vom Ankommen" for Deutschland Radio Wissen:
