Institute of Ecology and Evolution

The Institute of Ecology & Evolution at the University of Bern is devoted to research and teaching in all aspects of ecology and evolution, and aim to provide a scientific basis for the understanding and preservation of our living world. We study the mechanisms by which organisms respond to and interact with their environment, including phenotypic responses at individual level, change in gene frequencies at population level, change in species composition and abundance at community level, and the functioning of whole ecosystems.

The institute has core research facilities, including several different field stations in Switzerland, extensive aquarium and animal husbandry facilities, and state-of-the-art molecular genetics laboratories. It also maintains institutional bonds with the Eawag Centre of Ecology, Evolution & Biogeochemistry, the Natural History Museum of Bern, Institute of Bee Health, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Bern, the Swiss Ornithological Institute, and the Doctoral School in Ecology & Evolution of Western Switzerland.

News and Events

Two new fish species discovered!

Bárbara Calegari and her colleagues have discovered and described two new fish species for Switzerland. We are asking the public to name the species in a survey giving two options for each species. You can access the survey by clicking on this news box.
Thank you for participating!

New research station at the Zoo Zürich

In the recently opened research station at the Zoo Zürich, Eva Ringler's team will coordinate projects in one of the research compartments. In the following years, students and researchers from the Behavioural Ecology division will study various aspects of parental care and cognition in poison frogs. The work inside the compartments is fully visible to the zoo visitors, which will make research more visible and comprehensible to the general public.

ISME Image Award

Chujin Ruan (Eawag) and Dave Johnson (Eawag and UniBe) won the image competition for the cover of The ISME Journal. The image is a confocal laser scanning image of two microorganisms as they grow together across a surface. The image depicts how metabolic and physical interactions between microorganisms drive spatial self-organizing processes and lead to microscale pattern formation. The image will be presented on the cover for the entirety of 2025.

Prof. Dr. Laurent Excoffier holds his farewell lecture

On 10. December 2024, Prof. Dr. Laurent Excoffier held his final lecture for the IEE, entitled "Riding a genetic wave, surfing, and looking backward”. In this lecture, Laurent gave us a wonderful tour of his long and distinguished career from both a personal and a professional perspective. He gave us an inspirational overview of how his groundbreaking research has combined computational approaches and population genetics to understand the evolutionary expansions of humans across the world. In addition, Laurent provided some great advice for young scientists, based on the lessons he learned along his own scientific path. To honour his contributions, we presented Laurent with the first-ever “IEE Lifetime Achievement Award”. Although Laurent will retire from his position as Professor and Head of the Division of Computational and Molecular Population Genetics at the end of January 2025, as he noted in his talk “This is not the end…”! The entire IEE thanks Laurent for his nearly 25 years of excellence in research, teaching and service at the IEE and the University of Bern, and wishes him all the best for his new adventures.

When passion becomes a profession

Prof. Dr. Anne-Claire Fabre was recently interviewed by the Burgergemeinde about her work at the university and the Naturhistorisches Museum Bern, and about the Linnean Society's bicentenary medal she recently received in recognition of her outstanding research in the natural sciences.

On predicting the evolution of pathogens

Many viruses and bacteria species that threaten human health consist of multiple distinct strains, or genotypes. A lot of this genetic variation affects features of the pathogen that are recognized by the human adaptive immune response. Consequently, although an individual may have been previously infected by one strain, that prior infection may provide only partial protection against infection by another strain of the same pathogen species in the future. Using mathematical modelling, we showed how the specificity of the partial protection acquired through prior infection, combined with the genetic architecture of the pathogen species, shapes the evolutionary dynamics of multi-strain pathogens. The novel epidemiological-population genetic framework we developed holds promise for developing pathogen-specific recommendations of intervention strategies against multi-strain pathogens.

Revealing human impacts on freshwater biodiversity using AI

New research reveals previously unobservable human pressures on freshwater biodiversity in Switzerland, though the use of explainable artificial intelligence tools. This research addresses a seemingly simple question: Within the areas that a species could naturally live, where do humans impact a species the most? A major finding was that, for multiple species of fish, around 90% of habitable rivers in Switzerland are negatively impacted by human use. Concerningly, several threats often acted together to deplete the river’s suitability for a species, even if naturally the species could live there. By quantifying the relative role of natural factors and human influences, these insights could help improve the future for biodiversity in Switzerland by guiding restoration efforts towards the most efficient actions that alleviate threats in the areas where biodiversity is under most pressure.

First-ever IEE Symposium successfully held

On September 11 and 12, our first symposium was organized at the Natural History Museum in Bern. This one-and-a-half-day event was attended by more than 80 members of the institute including MSc students, PhD candidates, postdocs, technicians, administrative staff and PIs. There were several talks grouped into five overlapping research themes across different divisions. A dedicated poster session was also organized during the symposium. The symposium fostered a vibrant exchange of knowledge, underscoring the diverse expertise and collaborative spirit of our institute.

Afrikanische Expertise bringt die Universität voran

Professorin Margaret Owuor und Vizerektor Hugues Abriel sprechen über die Gründe und Pläne für die Initiative Afrique, die vorhandene Forschungskompetenzen an der Universität Bern bündeln will.
www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch

Heat extremes can increase ecological debts

In a new review paper published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Gerard Martínez-De León and Maddy Thakur from the Terrestrial Ecology division synthesise the main mechanisms mediating population and community responses to heat extremes, as well as their associated costs. Biological mechanisms immediately buffering the impacts of heat extremes can have lagged costs –known as ‘ecological debts’- that are likely to become more prevalent as populations or communities recover after extreme events. Gerard and Maddy propose a conceptual framework to infer how responses to heat extremes unveil over time, highlighting the roles of ecological debts in predicting population and community stability in a changing world.

Phage accelerate the spread of antibiotic resistance

In a new publication in Nature Communications, Chujin Ruan (Eawag), Dave Johnson (Eawag & UniBe), and co-workers show that phage predation can increase the spread of plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance. As a bacterial community grows across a surface, phage predation prevents any one bacterial genotype from persisting at the biomass periphery. This consequently maintains more spatial intermixing between different bacterial genotypes, which in turn increases the probability that a plasmid can transfer between a donor and a potential recipient cell. These findings have implications for the design and application of phage therapy.

Teacher of the Year 2023 - 2024

Prof Dr. Eva Ringler was awarded "Teacher of the Year" for third year Biology students specializing in Ecology and Evolution and Dr. Stephan Peischl for second year lecture "Statistik für Biologie".

Majda Bohutínská wins the John Maynard Smith Prize from the European Society for Evolutionary Biology!

Dr. Magdalena (Majda) Bohutínská, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Evolutionary Ecology and at Charles University in Czechia, has won the 2024 John Maynard Smith Prize from the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB)! This prize recognizes an outstanding young evolutionary biologist and is named after John Maynard Smith, an eminent evolutionary biologist and former President of ESEB. Majda's unlimited creativity, energy and enthusiasm for biology are an inspiration for all of us, and we are very lucky to have her as our colleague here in Bern! Majda will give the 2024 John Maynard Smith Prize Lecture at the next joint Evolution meeting, held in July 2024 in Montreal, Canada.

New video highlights Margaret Owuor’s research in the Amazon

The Institute of Ecology and Evolution is pleased to share a short video on the research on the coast of the Amazon that Prof. Dr. Margaret Owuor, a National Geographic Explorer and Integrative Biodiversity Conservation Science Professor at the Wyss Academy for Nature at the University of Bern, is doing together with her colleague and National Geographic Early Career Leadership Mentor Prof. Angelo Bernardino from the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo. The research is organized under the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Amazon expedition and focuses on the Ecological function, Climate Change and Socio-economic assessment of mangrove forests in the Amazon. Brazil’s mangroves provide ecosystem services for millions of people and store massive amounts of carbon. Yet, with the world’s attention focused on the region’s rapidly diminishing rainforests, this unique ecosystem has remained chronically overlooked. Until now. This work led to the discovery of a mangrove forest thriving in freshwater. As mangroves are known to grow only in seawater, this discovery tells us of the adaptive abilities of these important ecosystems. Furthermore, through multidisciplinary research tools such as drones, interviews and sampling, the explorers confirm that these mangroves store twice as much carbon as terrestrial forests and their importance to local communities for fisheries. This work assessed the values that the communities living adjacent to mangroves place on the mangrove ecosystem services for their well-being. The results of this research are under review.

Poster session

We had a very nice and diverse poster session at the IEE on Wednesday, 18 October, attended by researchers from all institutes at the Department of Biology and beyond.

Science - Cycles of fusion and fission enabled rapid parallel adaptive radiations in African cichlids

Much of biodiversity is generated through adaptive radiations. The cichlids of the East African Great Lakes are a textbook example of an adaptive radiation. Joana Meier and colleagues published a paper in Science showing that this radiation is indeed as young as 16'000 years and has evolved through multiple cycles of fusion and fission of the various lineages evolving during an adaptive radiation.

Nature - A continuous fish fossil record reveals key insights into adaptive radiation

Nare sieved for her PhD through tons of sand from Lake Victoria sediment cores reaching down to 8m into sediment layers with an age of up to 17'000 years old. She found a staggering 7'623 fish tooth fossils from which she could reconstruct that all major fish taxa present in today's lake arrived simultaneously as soon as the modern lake began to form. Her results suggest that there is no support for ecological priority effects. Furthermore, among the many taxa colonizing the lake, only cichlids in the new deep open water habitats suggesting that ecological versatility was key to the adaptive radiation.

Welcome Prof. Xiang-Yi Richter

Welcome Prof. Xiang-Yi Richter to the IEE. Xiang-Yi is an SNSF Starting Grant Professor and started her Group of Evolving Interactions here on 1 July. Her office is room D105, and her group will be in D148 on the 1st floor. Please stop by to say hello! You can learn more about Xiang-Yi and her research her (link).

Timing of antibiotic administration determines the spread of plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance during microbial range expansion

In a new publication in Nature Communications, Yinyin Ma (Eawag & ETH), Josep Ramoneda (Eawag) and Dave Johnson (Eawag & UniBe) show that the timing at which antibiotics are applied to a microbial community determines the ability of an antibiotic resistance-encoding plasmid to spread through the community. Surprisingly, they found a unimodal relationship between plasmid spread and the timing of antibiotic administration, where plasmid spread is maximized at intermediate administration times. This is caused by a delicate balance between the plasmid transfer and loss probabilities. These findings challenge the dogma of “hit hard, hit fast” when designing antibiotic administration strategies.

The genomic consequences of 10,000 generations of isolation in a wild mammal

In a new study in Current Biology, Xuejing Wang, Stephan Peischl and Gerald Heckel show that common voles (Microtus arvalis) on the Orkney archipelago have remained completely isolated for more than 5000 years. Orkney voles lost most genetic diversity and harbor high levels of putatively strongly deleterious mutations, yet results of computer simulations and the large current population sizes suggest rather mild effects on their fitness. While isolation leads to genetic deterioration, populations may still escape extinction and persist for very long periods of time.

SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2023

Congratulations to Francesca Angiolani, PhD student at the Behavioural Ecology Division! Her image “Searching for a good father” won the first prize in the category "Object of Study" in the SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2023. She even had a second image awarded by the committee. The picture “Cognition roulette” displays a Tokay gecko during a spatial learning experiment in a radial arm maze.

Prof. Dr. Katie Peichel is elected to the US National Academy of Sciences

Congratulation to Katie Peichel, head of our Institute, for her election to the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in research. Our Institute is extremely proud to host and benefit from the presence of such a great scientist and wonderful colleague.

Hintermann+Weber Research Prize 2022 awarded to Dr Daniel Slodowicz (PhD)

The 2022 Hintermann + Weber prize for applied research in nature conservation has been awarded to a former PhD student of the Conservation Biology Division, Dr Daniel Slodowicz!

His thesis entitled «Grassland Restoration: Relative effectiveness of different restoration methods on plant and invertebrate diversity» convinced the jury by the smart approach and a high practical relevance of the presented results.
Daniel Slodowicz is the second member of the Conservation Biology Division to receive the prestigious H+W Award after Dr Veronika Braunisch in 2008.
Congratulations to Dani for this great achievement!

INSECTS NEED OUR HELP IN A WARMING WORLD, NOW!

If no action is taken to better understand and reduce the impact of climate change on insects, we will drastically limit our chances of a sustainable future with healthy ecosystems.’ This warning in a very topical paper in Ecological Monographs comes from 70 scientists (including Maddy Thakur) from 19 countries around the world. But, they also provide ways to help insects in a warming world complete with management strategies.

Volz Award Winners 2022

The Volz Award for 2022 has been awarded to Annika Freudiger (best publication from MSc thesis: Ecological variation drives morphological differentiation in a highly social vertebrate) and Zuyao Liu (best publication from PhD thesis: Chromosomal Fusions Facilitate Adaptation to Divergent Environments in Threespine Stickleback). They both presented their work as part of the seminar Lecture Series in Ecology and Evolution on November, 1st, 2022. The board of directors congratulates them for their success and whishes them all the best for their upcoming scientific career.

Teaching award

Congratulation to Prof. Dr. Eva Ringler from our institute, who has received a Science faculty award
for her excellent teaching of the lecture "Behavioural ecology, research practical" in the Spring semester 2022.

Mycorrhizal association matters for plant’s responses to climate warming

In a paper published in Nature Communications, Maddy and his collaborators from East China Normal University show that terrestrial plants allocate more biomass to roots in warm and dry environments. In wetter environments, plants’ strategies are dictated by their mycorrhizal association. Plants associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi do not have to allocate more biomass to roots in warmer and wetter conditions. Based on a global meta-analysis, these results provide important insights into factors that would alter terrestrial carbon dynamics in response to climate warming and precipitation variability.

Two Bernese researchers receive SNSF Advanced Grant

Two Bernese researchers receive SNSF Advanced Grant

Neuropsychologist Katharina Henke and evolutionary biologist Katie Peichel are each receiving a highly endowed SNSF Advanced Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Their research projects deal with the ability to remember despite amnesia and the predictability of evolution.

How do organisms respond to, and recover after climate extremes?

In a recent review, Maddy and his co-authors present an extensive review of literature to show that most taxonomic groups living in terrestrial ecosystems are vulnerable to climate extremes, such as heat waves and prolong periods of drought. They further propose a conceptual framework to better integrate ecology of organisms to predict how they may recover after climate extremes have stopped.

CELL - The genomic origins of the world’s first farmers

In a paper published in Cell, Nina Marchi and colleagues determine the precise genetic origins of the first Neolithic farming populations in Europe and Southwest Asia, as well as the processes and the timing of their differentiation. Demogenomic modeling of high-quality ancient genomes reveals that the early farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a multiphase mixing of a Southwest Asian population with a strongly bottlenecked western hunter-gatherer population after the last glacial maximum. Moreover, the ancestors of the first farmers of Europe and Anatolia went through a period of extreme genetic drift during their westward range expansion, contributing highly to their genetic distinctiveness. This modeling elucidates the demographic processes at the root of the Neolithic transition and leads to a spatial interpretation of the population history of Southwest Asia and Europe during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.

Interview with Wyss Academy Prof. Margaret Owuor

An interview with Prof. Dr. Margaret Owuor ahead of the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference:
Margaret Owuor, Professor for Integrative Biodiversity Conservation Science at the Wyss Academy for Nature, knows all too well that policy statements and declarations for conservation are being decided on a global level. Which is one of the reasons why the scientist wants to see such issues broken down to the local level. With this strategy she intends to empower communities in her native Kenya. Which in turn could contribute to the goal of an ecosystem-based management approach.

JMS Prize Winner 2022 - Catalina Chaparro

Congratulations to Catalina Chaparro-Pedraza for receiving the John Maynard-Smitz Prize of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) in 2022!

Anna Feller wins faculty prize for best PhD thesis 2021!

Many congratulations to Anna for winning the faculty prize for best PhD thesis in biology in 2021 at University of Bern! Her thesis is entitled "On the genetic architecture of an adaptive radiation". She studied the genetic architecture of various traits such as head morphology, colour traits and sex determination in Lake Victoria cichlids that form one of the most spectacular adaptive radiations.

Volz Award 2022

This award will be given every two years for

- the best publication, resulting from a master thesis at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution.
- the best publication, resulting from a dissertation at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution.

The award is endowed with CHF 500.-.

Please send your application until Saturday, 30 April 2022 to susanne.holenstein@unibe.ch.

Teaching award

Congratulations to 4 teachers from our Institute, who have received a Science faculty award for their excellent teaching in Fall semester 2021:

- Prof. Dr. Madhav P. Thakur (Advanced concepts in Ecology and Evolution)
- Prof. Dr. Raphaël Arlettaz (Conservation Biology research practical)
- PD Dr. Jean-Yves Humbert (Conservation Biology research practical)
- PD Dr. Veronika Braunisch (Conservation Biology research practical)

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University of Bern
Institute of Ecology and Evolution

Baltzerstrasse 6
3012 Bern

Phone: +41 31 684 4511