Team

Scientific Staff

Dr. Tim Burzlaff

Group Leader

tim.burzlaff@fzi.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0) 761 203-54125
Raum 01 006
Tim’s main activities are in teaching: his interests are forest protection, ecosystem processes, forest entomology; he also supervises students in the introductory phase of their studies and supervises Bachelor’s and Master’s theses; in the faculty he is involved in curriculum development. In research, he is interested in application-oriented projects for insecticide-free regulation of bark beetles in close cooperation with the Forest Research Institute Baden-Württemberg (FVA), Department of Forest Protection. He studied forestry in Freiburg and completed his doctorate on alien animal and plant species.

ORCHiD

FreiDok plus

Dr. Vienna Kowallik

Group Leader

vienna.kowallik@forento.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0) 761 203-54125
Room 01 006
Vienna’s research focuses on host-microbiome interactions. She finds it particularly exciting to decipher the functions of microorganisms, how functions can be evolutionarily stable and how they are modified by abiotic and biotic interactions with the environment, the host and other microorganisms. Her aim is to understand the interplay between host, microbiome and environment in detail, which is why she particularly enjoys combining various methods from molecular biology with field research and controlled laboratory experiments.

Dr. Lennart van de Peppel

lennartvdpeppel@gmail.com
+49 (0) 761 203-54111
Room 01 005
Lennart van de Peppel is interested in the origin of the mutualistic symbiosis between insects and fungi. During his PhD at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, he studied the symbiosis between fungus-forming termites and basidiomycete fungi of the genus Termitomyces. He is currently studying the Lymexylidae, a family of wood-boring beetles, some of which live in an obligate symbiosis with yeast-like Alloascoidea fungi. He studies the biology of the species involved and uses molecular tools such as genomics and phylogenetics to answer questions about how these mutualistic interactions can evolve. Lennart is also interested in taxonomy and describes species that are new to science and are discovered as part of his research.

Dr. Jon Andreja Nuotclà

jon.nuotcla@forento.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0) 761 203-54111
Room 01 005
Jon Andreja is interested in the mechanisms underlying the evolution of altruistic behavior and sociality in insects. His main models are cooperatively breeding ambrosia beetles, which he studies in the field and using laboratory culture techniques. He has developed novel experimental approaches to study the plasticity of social behavior, including the detailed recording of behavioral patterns of individually marked animals, olfactory choice experiments and automated traps in the field. During his Master’s and PhD studies at the University of Bern in Switzerland, he investigated the role of insect-microbe interactions and habitat composition in social decision-making. He is currently continuing this work at the Chair of Forest Entomology and Forest Conservation at the Albert Ludwigs University of Fribourg as a research assistant, where he is also involved in teaching and supervising Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. Students interested in writing a thesis on topics related to the evolution of social behavior in insects are welcome to contact him by e-mail or in person. Although his main expertise is in the breeding and behavioral observation of ambrosia beetles, Jon Andreja is happy to support motivated students with an interest in other social insect groups. In particular, he is currently looking for individuals interested in field and laboratory work on various behavioral ecology topics such as individual social decision-making, conditional escape behavior, habitat selection, flight dynamics, and insect-microbe interactions.

Doctoral Candidates

Antoine Melet

PhD student

antoine.melet@forento.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0) 761 203-54111
Antoine is generally interested in the evolution of social behavior. He has worked as a field assistant with teams studying social wasps, bees and rodents. He is now interested in the experimental study of the evolution of sociality in beetles.

Helge Löcken

PhD student

helge.loecken@posteo.de
+49 (0) 761 4018-122
During his bachelor thesis, which was integrated into a project on the seed dispersal cycle in Europe’s last primary lowland deciduous forest (Białowieża, Poland), Helge investigated the effects of forest management on vertical vegetation structure and plant life stage composition. After completing his Bachelor’s degree in Biology at the Philipps University of Marburg, he went on to complete his Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg and developed a broad interest in entomology and method development. After his dissertation on “Drone-Netting”, a novel approach for remote sampling of insects, he started working in the VerbIps project, a joint project of the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg and the Forest Research Institute Baden-Württemberg. The project focuses on the control of bark beetles using an anti-aggregation pheromone called verbenone.

Lena Carlson

PhD student

lena.carlson@forento.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0) 761 203-54111
Lena is interested in ecosystem function, feedbacks and interactions between species (flora, fauna and fungi) as well as deadwood and its role in forest ecosystems. In her current research, she combines her background in environmental science, ecology and geography with methods from chemical ecology to study the volatilome – the composition of all volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a given environment.
Her work is part of the larger DFG-funded BETA-FOR project, which investigates the biodiversity and multifunctionality of formerly homogeneously-structured commercial forests.

Raluca Hedes

PhD student

raluca.hedes@forento.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0) 761 203-54111
Raluca studied at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, where she completed her master’s degree in environmental sciences with a focus on wildlife and biodiversity. She has a strong interest in applied entomological research, which is reflected in most of her professional activities. As a research assistant, she worked on projects assessing the diversity of different terrestrial arthropods as a consequence of forest conservation measures, on the influence of mechanized harvesting methods on the breeding success of the European spruce bark beetle and most recently tested a method for acoustic detection and monitoring of Ips typographus. In her current work, she is using DNA metabarcoding to investigate the relationship between soil compaction and the composition of soil arthropods on logging roads in forests.

Sifat Munim Tanin

PhD Student

sifat.tanin@forento.uni-freiburg.de
+49 (0) 761 203-54111
Room 01 004
Sifat was born in Bangladesh and completed his Master’s degree in Ecology at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2019. He is now working on the development of his dissertation project on the fungal symbionts of bark beetles under the supervision of Peter Biedermann at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Tobias Frühbrodt

PhD student

tobias.fruehbrodt@forst.bwl.de
+49 761 4018-122
External: FVA
Tobias completed both his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and his Master of Environmental Sciences at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg. His Bachelor’s thesis on the influence of tree species diversity on light utilization in mixed stands ultimately led him to focus on the influence of tree species diversity on infestation by bark beetles (copper engraver) as part of his Master’s thesis.
He is currently researching the chemoecology of the spruce bark beetle. The VerbIps project is concerned with the potential benefits of verbenone in integrated bark beetle management. He is interested in the small-scale mechanisms that can ultimately lead to outbreaks, which are visible at the landscape level. These include the beetle’s own pheromones, but also interaction with host and non-host volatiles. He is currently working at the Forest Research Institute Baden-Württemberg in the Department of Forest Protection.