Biosystematics, informatics and genomics of the big 4 insect groups: training tomorrow's researchers and entrepreneurs

Projects

Nesrine Akkari

The morphological background of flight and flightlessness – four wings, two wings, no wings: adaptations towards different modes of locomotion
Objectives: The insect thorax is well explored from a systematic point of view but functional and evolutionary aspects of wing reduction or modification are understudied and insufficiently understood. The "big four" thereby provide an excel... show more
Integrating fossils and recent taxa in the study of rove beetles systematics
Objectives: With ca. 60,000 recent species, rove beetles (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) are among the best examples of mega-diverse taxa that always were, and still are, super-challenging for systematic studies. All previous attempts to retrieve a relia... show more
Non-destructive study of morphology of rare or incompletely preserved specimens
Objectives: Development of innovative and efficient protocols for observation and recording of phylogenetically informative morphological characters from recent and fossil specimens where dissection is impossible by using advanced techniques as scann... show more