News
2025
Hannah Gaitzsch Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften Halle 2025
04.07.2025: Long Night of Science in Halle with Hannah and I presenting our ants. Thanks Hannah for the preparations and the support!
Simon Tragust Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften Halle 2025
Tim Kaufmann
01.07.2025: Way too hot these days in Halle, but anyway enjoyed a well done setting up an experiment with Baptiste and Hannah at the Peißnitz
Tim Kaufmann
14.05.2025: Welcome to Tim and Michelle in our group! Tim will engage in a Forschungsgruppenpraktikum reconstructing the parasitation of L. niger queens with Strongygaster from micro-CT data, while Michelle will dwelve into the aggression of Lasius neglectus when infected with the ectoparasitic fungus Laboulbenia formicarum.
Michelle Flieger
Hannah BSc defense
12.03.2025: Congratulations to Hannah for successfully defending her BSc-thesis yesterday!
Cindy Übensee
20.01.2025: A new year, a new beginning and a renewed welcome back to Cindy Übensee for her MSc "Projektstudie" and thesis as well as Sarah Theermann for a "Forschungsgruppenpraktikum"
Sarah Theermann
2024
Tabea RES award
16.12.2024: Good news and so proud for the ending year! Tabea won the Royal Entomological Society journals early career entomoligist award 2021-2023 for her first PhD paper Experimental viral spillover can harm Bombus terrestris workers under field conditions in Ecological Entomology!
Bowling shoes
27.11.2024: Bowling night! with Pina, Emil, Nina, Hannah, Sarah, Cindy, Lukas and Baptiste (who get's at least high points for posture :). Thanks to everybody for contributing to the group this year!
Bowling group
Bowling Nina Hannah
Bowling Sarah Cindy
Bowling Baptiste
Project
28.09.2024: A fun weekend in Poland with Baptiste Nezel for a project on the ectoparasitic fungi Aegeritella on Formica ants with members of Enikö Csatas Warsaw lab (Dani, Violette, Piotr, Tristan) and Istvan Maaks Szeged lab (Bonita, Kata, Adam). Thanks for the invitation Enikö!
Baptiste collecting
Welcome dinner
BBQ
10.09.2024: Congratulations to Sarah Theermann for successfully defending her BSc-thesis!
IUSSI 2024
15.07.2024: What a nice European IUSSI meeting 2024 in Lausanne with Andreia, Anna, Baptiste, Mozhgan and Patrycja definitively also enjoying it.
Pina Brinker goodbye BBQ1
Pina Brinker goodbye BBQ2
AG Simon Tragust
Hannah Gaitzsch
19.06.2024: I am hopelessly out of date, but here comes a flood of news.
First, congratulations to Celine Erdelen for successfully defending her BSc thesis (and thanks to the nice pictures for Pina and myself!).
Then, sad news. Pina's contract is unfortunately finished, but we took the opportunity to have a wonderful Goodbye BBQ and to take a group picture. Although lost to us, Pina will continue her academic journey in Berlin at the Umweltbundesamt, a position (permanent, YEAH!!!) she will take up in September.
Finally, the EMINENT collectors Hannah, Nina and Baptiste are back and Hannah will stick to the project two-fold, as a BSc candidate and as a student assistant. Welcome back!
Lyon Sightseeing
Lyon: Ant collecting
Lyon: Species identification
Lyon: Hannah enjoying a tart
Lyon: Nina enjoying a flan
Lyon: Baptiste enjoying a snack
08.04.2024: A good start into Baptiste's collection trip to Lyon together with Nina and Hannah as student assistants and Daisy as Master I, with a little bit of sightseeing, a lot of ant collecting and species identification, but also snacks at the end of the day. Keep on with the good work!
Sarah Theermann
19.02.2024: Welcome to Sarah Theermann, who is first doing her Projektstudie and then her BSc-thesis in our group on the venom gland of formicine ants
15.01.2024: The heat is on for Johanna's and Clara's "Jugend forscht" project "Mit den Fühlern im Ethanol: Eine Untersuchung der Auswirkungen von Drogen auf Ameisen". Fingers crossed!
Baptiste Nezel arrival in Halle
09.01.2024: Welcome to Baptiste who has finally arrived in Halle to start his EMINENT endeavour!
2023
Cindy Übensee BSc defence
23.11.2023: Congratulation to Cindy Übensee for successfully defending her BSc-thesis today and thanks to Céline Erdelen for bringing a beautiful cake for the occasion.
Roscoff Jaques-Monod conference
Roscoff group picture
Trabea Streicher presenting her poster
Me explaining my poster
13.11.2023: I completely forgot, but now I even have some pictures to share. Tabea and I presented our work as posters at a superinteresting and nice Jaques-Monod conference "A matter of scale: Within-host and between-host processes drivin coevolution with parasites" in beautiful Roscoff.
Céline Redelen
09.10.2023: Welcome to Céline Erdelen! Céline started her "Projektstudie" and will then do her BSc-Thesis with Pina on the influence of the gut microbiota on viral spill over in bumblebees
28.09.2023: What a nice Central European IUSSI meeting 2023 last week in Cluj-Napoca. Fantastic location, great presentations and wonderful organization. Thanks to Bálint Markó and his team for the organization. As a new steering committee member and web page responsible I will do my best!
15.08.2023: Welcome to Nico Hoffschlaeger! Nico will do his work for a teacher's degree in our lab, carrying on the work of Nina and Emil: the detoxification of secondary plant compounds through formic acid.
Nico Hoffschläger
18.07.2023: Pina and her BSc student Cindy together with other General Zoology department members hard at work to collect honey from our hives. Thanks for this delicious effort!
28.07.2023: Congratulations to Pina, for her interview with Science on how squash bug young locate a critical bacterium, a recent publication in Current Biology . You can check out the interview here: doi: 10. 1126/science. adj4665
25.05.2023: Congratulation to Emil, Nina and Sally for successfully defending their BSc-theses. Super proud of them all for having done such a good job!
02.05.2023: Welcome to Cindy Übensee! Cindy is currently doing her "Projectstudie" with Pina on gut microbiota establishment in bumblebees and will then go along to do her BSc-thesis on the role of the gut microbiota in proctecting honeybees from viral infection.
Adria LeBoeuf visit
10.02.2023: What a nice visit to Adria LeBoeuf's social fluid lab in Fribourg with Lukas to present his work and to get some more Camponotus samples
Present from the gardeners of the Botanical Garden Jena
24.01.2023: What a nice present from the gardeners of the Botanical Garden in Jena after having been invited to give them a talk about the invasive Garden ant Lasius neglectus in their garden.
Lukas on collection trip to Münster
10.01.2023: A quick trip to the Molecular Evolution and Sociobiology Group of Jürgen Gadau in Münster with Lukas. Guess I never was that quick and successful in "collecting" ants.
09.01.2023: A happy new year! What a year ending: first a DFG project was granted (EMINENT: Consequences of an EMerging parasite on an INvasivE aNT in Europe; stay tuned!) and then the university building with my office got flooded. Looks like a fun 2023!
2022
09.12.2022: Christmas party 2022! Finally again in it's old glory and with Pina and Andreia preparing a special treat
29.10.2022: First ever general zoology writers camp at the field station Fauler Ort, with Tabea, Andreia, Patrycja, Lucie, Christopher, Sara and myself
Antology
17.09.2022: What an honor and supernice oppurtunity to give the introductory talk for Evelyn Bracklow's art project Antology in Dortmund in the rooms of the Frappanz Kollektiv . Check it out and stay tuned.
14.09.2022: After a supernice week in Berlin at the Ecological Immunology Workshop 2022 , our group welcomes Sally-Luise Volland that started her BSc work on establishing a pH measurement system to track the use of formicine venom gland secretions in realtime and our group also welcomes Emil Cyranka that will together with Nina Schäffner elucidate the potential of formicine ant venoms to detoxify plant alkaloids in his BSc work.
29.08.2022: Welcome to Nina Schäffner that started her BSc work in our lab elucidating the potential of formicine ant venoms to detoxify plant alkaloids.
L. neglectus sampling in Jena
06.07.2022: A fun afternoon in Jena with Pina and Lukas. First sampling L. neglectus in the botanical garden and then handing over samples while enjoying a beer with our collaborators Adrian Richter and Kenny Jandausch .
01.06.2022: Welcome to Pina Brinker who just started today in our group!
12.04.2022: Congratulations to Tim Kaufmann for successfully defending his BSc-Thesis: Potential detoxification of the plant alkaloid cytisin by the ant Camponotus nicobarensis via poison gland secretions
25.02.2022: Research funding of the Ethologische Gesellschaft e. V. awarded: Towards automatic tracking of sanitary behaviours involving antimicrobial compounds in space and time