Research Projects

The CeNak houses unique and rich collections of arachnids in Baltic and Bitterfeld ambers. We are currently using these collections to better understand arachnid biodiversity in the Eocene, some 45 million years ago. We aim to describe representative fossil species and reconstruct them using modern methods, such as micro-CT and synchotron imaging ... [ more ]

Ecuador is diverse in habitats but also rich in species, most of which remain unknown to science. The country is also part of a global biodiversity hotspot and faces a suite of serious environmental threads. The project “Diversity of spiders in the cloud forests of Ecuador” tries to fill in a critical gap through documenting the spider fauna of four Nature Reserves ... [ more ]

In many regions of the world tropical rainforests are being destroyed for timber production or farming an agriculture. This Project is a collaborative research centre (CRC) of the German Research Council in conjunction with the University of Jambi and University of Bogor in Indonesia, and the University of Göttingen in Germany ... [ more ]

The Museum Godeffroy was a private Museum in Hamburg that existed between 1861 and 1885. Material that was accumulated by professional collectors in Australasia and the Pacific some 150 years ago for this Museum constitutes the first major collection of spiders. The more than 500 type specimens are still the primary reference for spider taxonomy in Australia  ... [ more ]

The Biodiversity Exploratories are a priority programme of the German Research Council and investigate long-term changes in several large landscapes and reserves across Germany. This project analyses interactions of several components of biodiversity and the effects of land use strategies on biodiversity and ecosystem functions ... [ mehr ]

Amalie Dietrich was an explorer in the 19th century and one of the first women to explore the Australian continent as a naturalist and collector. Dietrich arrived in Brisbane but travelled further North and inland for more than a decade to collect plants and animals. Her spider collection is extremely rich ... [ more ]

We are investigating patterns of speciation and diversification in a complex subterranean geology of the Pilbara region in Western Australia. The Pilbara is a global hotspot of subterranean biodiversity but this diversity is increasingly threatened my mining and industrial development. Here, we are investigating speciation patterns ... [ more ]

With more than 400 million years of evolutionary history, arachnids are an ancient animal lineage and much older than most vertebrates and insects. Many arachnid groups share common ecological patterns such as poor dispersal capacities, specific habitat preferences and high diversity at the species level. We use selected arachnid groups  ... [ more ]