– TRADITION SINCE 2014 –
The research of TU Dresden Applied Zoology (tudaz) revolves around a fundamental biological issue – reproduction, why it differs between individuals (mainly males). We combine molecular, metabolic and microscopy with evolutionary approaches (how about E=M3 for that?) in order to address mechanisms and consequences of sperm function and male (in)fertility and preconception health (aka sperm ecology). Using Drosophila and other insects as models, we focus on the fertility factors diet, microbes, mito-nuclear interactions and the immune system. We are interested in the societal significance of variation in reproduction and see here why our research is ‘applied’ zoology. See here how to join us, details of our research and our publications. We aim to represent our research in the press and to the public. Our current teaching areas are here.
Disclaimer: This website is regularly updated. The official university website is here and cannot frequently be updated for technical reasons.
Sprechzeit/ Office hour Prof. Reinhardt: during the semester without prior email/ während des Semesters ohne Voranmeldung: Mi/ Wed 14.30 – 15.30 (außer Fakultätsratswochen/ except when faculty council meeting). For appointments outside the semester and inquiries: email or contact our office, Mr. Broschas (Tel +49 351 463 39451). Außerhalb der Vorlesungszeit und für andere Angelegenheiten: Anmeldung über das Sekretariat (Hr Broschas Tel. 39451 oder per E-mail).
2024 News
| 26 Apr. Christoph’s poster contribution accepted, with Otti & Klaus on “Bed bugs as a model of innate reproductive immunity“. Christoph will be presenting at International Congress of Entomology in Kyoto, August 2024. |
| 18 Apr. Paper out. Congratulations to Otti. His and his coauthors’ paper “Do diesel exhaust particles in pollen affect colony founding in the bumble bee Bombus terrestris?” [no, the don’t] has been published in Insectes Sociaux. |
| 17 Apr. Tons of Applied Zoology coverage – the Madonna miracle just before Easter has been caused by mites. See here for a collection of coverage. Text is, of course, the same everywhere. |
| 5 Apr. The Austrian Radio ORF produced a bed bug part in their Insectarium series. If you want to hear it: Here. It is in German, but nice. |
| 4 Apr. Strike! Accepted! After two small papers by Klaus were accepted, Semen adaptation to microbes in an insect, to be published in Evolution Letters, is tudaz paper number 150 – another piece of news that deserves to be in red. |
| 3 Apr. There will be no Food Fats in Society. |
| 31 Mar. Best of luck in the new job, Christian! We stay in touch till you are a doctor. |
| 31 Mar. Our small exhibition Neozoa will close their gates. We hope for a next one by the end of this year. |
| 22 Mar. Paper submitted. A long ride for “Drosophila melanogaster sperm turn more oxidative in the female”. The race is open for tudaz paper # 150. |
| 19 Mar. Paper published. Congratulations to Birte – her thesis work contributed to the publication No fitness effects of same-sex copulations in male red flour beetles, published in Ecology & Evolution. Link |
| 11 Mar. Klaus’ interview with the Südwestpresse Ulm. Guess on what? pdf is here. |
| 04 Mar. Muriel Åhlund, from Uppsala University, visits our lab. Don’t miss her talk tomorrow on Reproductive interactions in a warming world: insights from long-term monitoring of naturally hybridising flycatchers. E33 at 16.40. All welcome and beer afterwards. |
| 04 Mar. Klaus’ interview with the German pest control magazine DpS. Guess on what? pdf is here. Unprofessionally, Klaus gave away unpublished data! |
| 28 Feb. Many congratulations to Marit who successfully passed her BSc defence on The effect of diet and sex on Drosophila immunity. |
| 16 Feb. Another small paper published from Klaus’ Insects course – the distribution of the juniper scale in Dresden, in the Mitteilungen Sächsischer Entomologen. pdf. |
| 13 Feb. Dresden’s headlice from Klaus’ Insects course made it again into Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten and Sächsische Zeitung. One mentions the two students – congratulations! |
| 5 Feb. From a practical into the public… The results of a head lice project in Klaus’ Insects Course now made it into a press release of the TU Dresden. The press release was produced by Hedda whose Lab Rotation in the TU Dresden press office was supervised by us. What a nice combination. Link to the project paper, link to the press release. |
| 24 Jan. Congratulations to Martin for having another co-authored paper accepted “Toward the integration of speciation research” to appear in Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society |
| 11 Jan. Congratulations to Helen and Nele for securing support from the FOSTER programme to edit BioS Reports. |
| 8 Jan. Congratulations to Johanna for submitting her BSc thesis: pH influence on bedbug sperm parameters. |
| 4 Jan. Yeehaw! 2024 starts with an explosion: Congratulations to Martin who co-authored a paper in Science: The genetic basis of a recent transition to live-bearing in marine snails. The only red news item in a decade. Link |
| 2 Jan. Results of some of our talks and posters are highlighted in the conference review Biology of Spermatozoa in the journal Molecular Reproduction and Development. Link. |
| 1 Jan. Wishing everyone a great 2024. Join the lab meeting 10 Jan for details of the project, challenges and joys ahead of us. |
2023
| 12 Dec. Next hurdle: Food fats are everywhere… is invited to be presented in the last selection round. Crossing fingers needed by everyone, especially on 25 Jan 2024. |
| late addition 1 Nov. tudaz now goes economy, somewhat… We are happy to host a small, startup-initiative company, who have already started working. More details to be announced soon, all is still sooo secret. |
 28 Nov. Huge congratulations to Lennart for an almost perfect performance. Many many many congratulations, Dr Winkler! All the very best from tudaz. It has been a pleasure. |
| 20 Nov. Accepted! With colleagues from Norway, UK, CZ, Klaus’ paper The Evolution of Female-Biased Genital Diversity in Bedbugs (Cimicidae) is finally accepted in Evolution. The first draft is five years old and was still part of another paper. Great news. tudaz paper #140. |
| 11 Nov. Bedbugs still in the news, well in Saxony things are a bit later… MDR (very similar to the interview 3 years ago, which is here) and a strange English version of it here, probably some kind of automated news generator bot. |
| 10 Nov. Klaus mentioned in the F.A.Z. – one boring, superfluous sentence behind a paywall is what is left from a 1-h work. Read it here – only for internal use here. |
| 3 Nov. Klaus seems to be (un)happy with how the universities are funded in Germany. See his interview (in German). pdf |
| 2 Nov. Congratulations to Otti whose lecture series ‘Fundamentals of Evolution and Biodiversity‘ was nominated to compete for ‘TU Dresden’s E-learning Gem’ (yes, they use the word Schmuckstück!). Fingers crossed for Otti! |
| 1 Nov. Congratulations to Otti who had a few publications quietly out lately… see our current list. |
| 31 Oct. A big farewell to ChristianK, who has been working in our lab for almost 8 years. A big thank you and best of luck to Christian who now works for the faculty of Biology, still part-time for us. |
| 21 Oct. Interview/ Podcast with Klaus on bedbugs (in German) Bayrischer Rundfunk – IQ Wissenschaft & Forschung. Link. |
| 18 Oct. Submitted! Congratulations to JoJo who submitted her MSc thesis perfectly in time: Sexually antagonistic coevolution conceals density-dependent genital fitness. |
| 17 Oct. Welcome (back) to Birte who will do her MSc thesis with us, studying the female transcriptomic postmating response. |
| 14 Oct. Afraid of bedbugs? Not us! See Klaus’ interview with Spektrum der Wissenschaften. Link, for those who don’t use an adblocker. |
| 11 Oct. Congratulations to Christian, Otti and Klaus. Their paper, with co-authors, Despite genetic isolation in sympatry, post-copulatory reproductive barriers have not evolved between bat- and human-associated common bedbugs (Cimex lectularius L.) has been accepted in Frontiers in Zoology. |
| 9-13 Oct. Introductory away-week with the first-year BioS students. |
| 6 Oct. New paper out: Congratulations to Christoph and colleagues, who got their paper “Differential expression of immunity-related genes in larval Manduca sexta tissues in response to gut and systemic infection” published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. Luckily, some work was done here, so the paper is partially on our books, too. Link. |
| 1 Oct. Official farewell to Lennart. All the very best from tudaz, Lennart. It has been a very good four years! Fingers crossed for your next enterprises and the defence. |
| 21 Sept. Paper on Primicimex cavernis published in Insect Conservation and Diversity. Link. |
| 20 Sept. We will wine and walk, wandering, and wondering whether the weather will be Wahnsinn. We did and it was:
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| 19 Sept. Food Fats in Society submitted. Everybody cross their fingers, please. |
 7 Sept. Another great strike – Lennart won (shared) the Matt-Gage Poster Prize of the Biology of Spermatozoa meeting. Here receiving it from Rhonda Snook and John Fitzpatrick. Many congratulations! |
| 7 Sept. Congratulation to Klaus ;-). His paper with collaborators “Primicimex cavernis Barber 1941 (Heteroptera: Cimicidae): A rare parasite on a very abundant host” has been accepted in Insect Conservation and Diversity. Some things take a little longer than others. |
| 3 to 10 Sept. tudaz fully represented at ‘Biology of Spermatozoa’ at Nyvashämn near Stockholm. 5 Sept David gave a stunning talk, even without the motility data.
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| 1 Sept. Welcome to Elena who does an internship in our lab. |
| 25 Aug. Front page of the Sächsische Zeitung… Read it here a bit larger.
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| 23 Aug. See the TU-D and UoGlasgow press releases for our beauty. |
| 21 August. A pearl that will shine for life… “Mitonuclear interactions shape both direct and parental effects of diet on fitness and involve a SNP in mitoribosomal 16s rRNA” has been published today. Congratulations to our former Dresden Fellow Adam Dobson, who with Susi, tudaz students, Klaus and Australian collaborator Damian Dowling has achieved this publication in PLOS Biology. Extra bonus: the Academic Editor was Nick Lane. Excellent news for tudaz. Link. Also see the really elegant press release from Univ Glasgow, where Adam is now. |
| 31 July. Published in Functional Ecology: “Population density affects sexual selection in an insect model” by Lennart and MSc student Ronja. Many congratulations to this publication in a very prestigious journal. Link |
| 26 July. Breaking news: We remain in full power. |
| 25 July. Paper out – congratulations to Otti, Diesel exhaust particles alter gut microbiome and gene expression in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris has been published in Ecology and Evolution. Link. |
 22 July. German Abitur (A-levels) soon with bedbugs? Klaus’ old study on bedbug reproduction made it into a panel of questions to prepare teachers and students for A-levels. On the title page even. |
| 20 July. After all that happened it is certainly a piece of (good) news that a parcel with samples has finally arrived in Arizona. Thanks to all who helped in what became an involuntary group effort. |
| 10 July. Food Fats in Society has been selected for submission of a full proposal… deadline 19 Sept – in case you wonder why you won’t see Klaus till then. |
| 3 July. Updates from the MathNat Newsletter: Paula et al.’s video on the anlion disovery in the Dresdner Heide is well beyond 3000 views. BioS Reports and Neozoa exhibition mentioned in the Newsletter. And BioS students’ and our student helpers Nele and Helen brief video on Drosophila and Alzheimer Research is published on the TU website. See here for the MathNat Newsletter. |
| 26 June. Congratulations to Otti, Christoph and Klaus – the DFG decided to fund our project Innate Reproductive Immunity. Outstanding news! |
| 9 June. Scale Insect excursion for Otti & Klaus. Wie schön! Result: A whitefly species new for Germany. |
 7 June. Silkworm excursion in the Insects course. Wie schön! |
| 6 June. Moth trapping night in the Insects course cancelled. |
| 4 June. Congratulations to Martin! His paper Evolutionary quantitative proteomics of reproductive protein divergence in Drosophila was accepted in Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. |
| 2 June. Many congratulations to our former lab member, Dresden Fellow Adam Dobson, Susi and Klaus, co-author and collaborator Damian Dowling, and three former students – Emmely, Luisa, Lucas. Their paper Mitonuclear interactions define both direct and parental effects of diet on fitness, and involve a SNP in mitoribosomal 16s rRNA has been accepted in PLoS Biology. An amazing strike! |
| 31 May. Another student project from the Insects Course 2022 is published: Headlice distribution in Dresden Kindergardens and primary schools. Link |
 31 May – 2 June. tudaz retreat: fieldwork, fun and Forschungsvision. |
| 29 May. A late Welcome! to Josefine and Marit who do their Forschungdsparktikum and BSc in our lab. On reproductive immunity. |
| 22 May. Visting (and teaching) entomologist Dr. Matthias Nuss is impressed by our exhibition on Neozoa – thank you Matthias for your kind words! And some of our exhibited insect species actually stimulated new or updated species profiles in the citizen science platform Insekten Sachsen – Lasius neglectus, Icerya purchasi (the publication of this first Saxonian record is outstanding), Leptoglossus occidentalis, Unaspis euonymi, Oecanthus pellucens or Corythucha ciliata. So some immediate impact of our exhibition on citizen science and the public. |
| 16 May. Our Neozoa exhibition covered by the BILD Zeitung. pdf |
| 16 May. Klaus’ tolerance model in sexual conflict, ignored in science, has now entered the German eduation system – see article by collaborator R. Asshoff from Münster Univ. pdf (in German). |
| 15 May. Klaus interviewed by Deutschlandfunk on three-parent babies. |
 12 May. Look who is smiling! Lennart submitted his thesis today “Sex-specific selection in different environments“. |
 9 May. Come and join the opening of our new exhibition “Neozoa in Saxony“. Really great, Stefanie and Nat! Find out what the new species are, where they come from, what they do and what our group has to do with them. See university-wide announcement here. |
| 27 Apr. “Food fats are everywhere…”. Proposal submitted. |
| 27 Apr. Klaus gives a seminar in the Senckenberg Museum in Dresden: Phylogeny, host shifts and genitalia evolution in the bedbug family (Cimicidae). |
| 24 Apr. Susi’s and Christin’s paper Genome-wide temperature-sensitivity of Polycomb group regulation and reduction thereof in temperate Drosophila melanogaster published in Genetics. Excellent news, many congratulations to Susi and Christin! Link |
| 20 Apr. Two small papers by Klaus on scale insects are accepted. |
| 3 Apr. Otti reads and runs the Fundamentals of Evolution and Biodiversity course. The demonstration of how bad non-blind measurements are, was (as always) stunning. |
| 3 Apr. Advanced Evolutionary Biology (MSc Biology in Society) starts, Martin, Otti and Klaus contribute. |
| 6 Mar. Martin gives a seminar in Halle. |
| 4 Mar. Lennart will represent tudaz at the Swiss Entomology meeting. Link. Winkler L, Eilhardt R, Janicke T. Population density affects sexual selection in the red flour beetle. |
| 1 Mar. Welcome to Christoph, our new postdoc to work on innate reproductive immunity. |
| 20 Feb. Article in teachers’ journal Unterricht Biologie: Bedbugs – evolutionarily interesting animals, by Klaus and colleagues from Münster. |
| 17 Feb. Greta finishes her internship placement in our group. |
| 14 Feb. Manuscript submitted. Primicimex cavernis (Heteroptera: Cimicidae): a globally and regionally rare parasite on a globally and regionally very abundant host. |
| 10 Feb. Another manuscript published from Klaus’ Insects course. The distribution of the Cabbage Whitefly around Dresden. Link |
| 9 Feb. Manuscript resubmitted… Secret. |
| 2 Feb. Submitted! Collaborative grant by Christoph, Klaus, Otti and Sheffield’s Mike Siva-Jothy. Innate reproductive immunity. |
 26 Jan. tudaz on the sledge. ChristianK organised a beautiful sledging day in Altenberg. The last time we did that was on 18 Jan 2017! |
| 24-27 Jan. tudaz at a Gordon Conference! Well one of us… Martin will be speaking about Sperm metabolism, ejaculate – female intractions and reproductive isolation at the Gordon research conference on Speciation in Florence. |
| 24-27 Jan. tudaz at a Gordon Conference! Well…, one of us. Martin will be speaking about Sperm metabolism, ejaculate – female interactions and reproductive isolation at the Gordon research conference on Speciation in Florence. |
| 23 Jan. Congratulations to Nele and Helen, our two student editors for getting funding via the FOSTER programme of the TU Dresden to run BioSReports one more year. Excellent news! Link coming soon. Link to BioSReports. |
| 17 Jan. Congratulations to Paula for an excellent defence of her BSc thesis Glycosylation of bedbug sperm. |
| 11 Jan. Excellent start! Congratulations to Lennart who co-authored a paper in PLoS Biology on Sexual selection in females and the evolution of polyandry. Link |
| 02 Jan. Happy New Year to everyone! Let’s expect the ninth tudaz year to become the best one. Probably. |
2022
| 20 Dec. Another bit of good news! Congratulations to Lennart for an extension grant for his PhD project (and beyond), from the Graduate Academy of TU Dresden. |
| 16 Dec. Those who are still here can join for the W-Plätzchen and end-of-year Glühwein. |
| 15 Dec. Great news: Martin won quite a grant by the TU Dresden Graduate Academy (the postdoc starter kit) – many congratulations! |
| 14 Dec. Farewell to Niyusha – thanks for all the help and best wishes for the future. |
| 2 Dec. Lab clean, then a ho-ho-ho fondue outside, thanks to Otti, Suse and others for organising it. |
| 24 Nov A nice en-of-year present for tudaz: Christoph is co-author on a Nature Communications paper that just appeared. Windfelder et al.: High-throughput screening of caterpillars as a platform to study host–microbe interactions and enteric immunity. Many congratulations to Christoph! Link |
| 23 Nov. Many congratulations to Lennart for having their paper out in Ecology and Evolution Link “Diet quality impairs male and female reproductive performance and affects the opportunity for selection in an insect model”. This is Lennart’s first Tribolium paper from Dresden and the 120th tudaz paper. |
| 23 Nov. Thanks to Martin for organising the first joint journal club with the Schirmeier group even though the paper by Matos et al. 2021 discussed “Brain and testis: more alike than previously thought?“was underwhelming. |
| 10 Nov. Farewell to Mischa, good luck for the future and all the best back in Liverpool. |
| 9 Nov. Welcome to Jikai who joined our lab after a successful talk. Soon we will learn more about the Function of sperm mitochondria. |
| 8 Nov. tudaz deleted their twitter account (@tudaz2, for the records). Five years probably is also enough. |
| 7-25 Nov. Christin working in our collaborator’s lab in Glasgow. |
| 5 Nov. Again: Klaus’ talk on the Biology of Scale Insects, Overview of Species occurring Saxony, and Hints for Identification. Link |
 1 Nov. Our own Otti is giving the ZooPrimeTimeTalk on Microbes: ecological factors affecting reproductive traits in males and females. |
| 1-2 Nov tudaz hosting Dr Sean Stankowski, ISTA Vienna for a talk in the Biological seminar Link, the other in the lab meeting on Speciation in snap dragons |
 30 Oct. tudaz inofficial news: house warming party at the Otti’s |
| 17 Oct. Congratulations! Lennart is co-author on a study published in Functional Ecology: “Sexual selection moderates heat stress response in males and females”. |
| 17 Oct. Welcome to Greta from Senftenberg Univ on an internship in our group. Sperm lipid profile, temperature and mito-nuclear variation. |
| 11-12 Oct. tudaz hosting Dr Caitlin McDonough-Goldstein Univ Vienna for two (!) talks, one in the Biological seminar Link, the other for the MSc BioS – ‘A queer feminist view on sexual reproduction‘ |
| 9 Oct. Paper out. “Bed bugs live in dirty places” – How Using Live Animals in Teaching Contributes to Reducing Stigma, Disgust, Psychological Stigma, and Misinformation in Students. Published in CBE – Life Sciences Education. Link |
| 5 – 18 Oct . Suse working in our collaborator’s lab in Glasgow. |
| 4 Oct. Klaus’ special talk on the Biology and Cultural History of Bedbugs. 100 years Natural History Museum Erfurt. |
| 28-30 Sept. Most tudaz scientists are away for the PhD student meeting in Wittenberg. |
| 23 Sept. Klaus’ talk on Ecological Lipidology at the FOR meeting Temperature, Behaviour and Metabolism. |
| 20 Sept. Farewell to long-term postdoc Susi. Best of luck for the future from all of tudaz. |
| 18 Sept. Klaus’ talk on the Biology and Cultural History of Scale Insects, and Overview of Species occurring Saxony. |
 15 Sept. tudaz’ Wine & Walk needs no further words. |
| 14 Sept. Congratulations to Lucas for a great ‘defence’ talk to pass his introductory work and now formally becoming a BSc student in our lab. Female postmating sexual selection. Bedbugs, it will be. Welcome Lucas! |
| 7-11 Sept. Otti will be representing tudaz at the Ecological Immunology Conference in Blossin near Berlin. Female immune response to sexually transmitted bacteria. |
 5 Sept. Welcome to Mischa from Stu Wigby’s lab in Liverpool! Mischa is an exchange PhD student who will be looking into metabolic properties of accessory gland cells in Drosophila, using FLIM. |
| 1 Sept. Success! An experimental study with school children, carried out with colleagues from Münster has been accepted for publication in CBE-Life Sciences Education. Title: “Bed bugs live in dirty places” — How using live animals in teaching contribute to reducing stigma, disgust, psychological stigma and misinformation in students”. |
| 27-30 Aug. Professor Shinichi Nakagawa will be visiting our group. Join to see his seminar on Monday 29 Aug 3pm E33 “Meta-analyzing in biology and beyond” Link |
| 14-19 Aug. Martin and Lennart are representing tudaz at Eur Soc Evol Biol meeting in Prague. |
| 11 Aug. A significant tudaz achievement: the review synthesis “Ecological Lipidology” has been accepted for publication in elife. Great news, to be celebrated on Sun 28 Aug. Some explanations |
| 1 Aug. Congratulations to Martin for having his paper Functional diversity and evolution of the Drosophila sperm proteome accepted in Molecular and Cellular Proteomics. |
 20 July. We have another media star in the group: Paula, our BSc student features in a youtube video of the TU Dresden on the discovery of the largest population of an antlion species. Check out the video here. See also the TU Dresden news item. Great job, very interesting video, congratulations Paula! |
| 18 July. Two small, somewhat unusual manuscripts accepted in the journal Unterricht Biologie, from Klaus’ collaboration with education scientiests: 1) The bedbug: a bloodsucker with unusual evolutionary features, 2) Sexual conflict: Safer Sex or evolutionary arms race? |
| 18 July. Written exam Fundamentals of evolution and biodiversity. |
| 8 July. Long Night of the Sciences without tudaz? Not so! Alina, a BSc student supervised by David and so working a bit in the BIOTEC won a double victory in the science slam – both the jury prize and the audience prize went to her! Beating lots of postdocs and PhD students. Brilliant! Congratulations Alina, very well done! |
| 29 June. Welcome to Paula who will join the group as a Bachelor student, looking into Glycosylation and reproductive immunity. |
| 20 June. Klaus will represent tudaz at the 7th Meeting of International Heteropterists’ Society, together with collaborator S. Roth from Norway, About the others – those not in your bed. Ecology of Cimicidae, 4-8 July 2022 in Barcelona. Link to Congress. |
| 8 June. Lennart’s paper “A meiotic driver alters sperm form and function in house mice: a possible example of spite” is now out in Chromosome Research. Many congratulations! Link |
| 25 May. Welcome to Rico who will do a field project in our group for the Forschungsspezialisierung and perhaps BSc thesis The effect of precipitation on pit building in antlions. |
 20 May. Welcome to Niusha who will join us an intern to get some microscopy experience, under David’s supervision. |
| 18 – 20 May. tudaz on RETREAT. |
| 13 May. Well done to Ronja for handing in her BSc thesis The effect of population density on sexual selection in Tribolium. |
| 11 May. Welcome to Sebastian who will join us a Bachelor student to work on Adaptation of seminal fluid to microbes. |
| 11 May. Welcome to Alina who will join us a Bachelor student after successfully passing the research specialisation talk. Temperature, sperm and lipids… watch this space |
| 6 May. Bad news will not be announced. Even after six weeks of waiting. |
| 27 Apr. Bad news will not be announced. Even after eight months of waiting. |
| 22 Apr. Lennart gave a seminar talk at the University of Bielefeld. |
| 21 Apr. Success!!! Lennart’s paper (from a previous position) was accepted in Chromosome Research – “A meiotic driver alters sperm form and function in house mice: a possible example of spite“ |
| 20 Apr. Success!!! Lennart’s talk was accepted at ISBE in Stockholm! “Impact of population density on sexual selection in the red flour beetle“ |
| 6 Apr. Success!!! Lucas has defended his MSc thesis on “Detection limitations of environmental DNA“. Congratulations! |
| 5 Apr. Congratulations, Martin got the last paper from his PhD accepted in Journal of Evolutionary Biology. “Experimental sexual selection affects the evolution of physiological and life-history traits“. Link |
| 1 Apr. Otti is giving a Plenary Talk at the 27th Graduate meeting of the German Zoological Society “Microbes: ecological factors affecting male and female reproductive traits“. |
| 1 Apr. Lennart is representing our Group at the 27th Graduate meeting of the German Zoological Society with a talk “Impact of population density on sexual selection in the red flour beetle“. |
| 1 Feb. If rumours are correct, long-term student helper Lucas submitted his MSc thesis today. |
 18 Jan. A surprise prize. Biology students voted Klaus’ digital version of the module Fundamentals of Evolution and Biodiversity as good enough to be worth a prize. Proud and ashamed at the same time (how little I did and that was worth a prize…). |
| 10 Jan. First paper of the year, a left-over from 2021, the discovery of the house centipede in Dresden, as from a photograph sent in from the public. Link. |
 1 Jan. A very big WELCOME and Bienvenido to Dr David Flores Benitez. David will work on the sperm biology of lipids, and on mito-nuclear interactions. |
2021
| 31 Dec. Farewell to Christoph who will leave us to do medical microfluidics. Hopefully not too long… |
| 30 Dec. A new-year present: A late paper by Ralph, taken forward by Biz “Divergent natural selection alters male sperm competition success in Drosophila melanogaster” has been accepted in Ecology & Evolution. |
| 21 Dec. Farewell to Sharath, many thanks for your help and best of luck for your future. |
| 16 Dec. Another Christmas present! Klaus’ and collaborators’ article on the Species list of scale insects in Saxony has been published in Entomologische Nachrichten und Berichte. Not internationally peer-reviewed but quite nice. pdf |
| 15 Dec. A Christmas present! Congratulations to Biz: Sperm metabolic rate predicts female mating frequency across Drosophila species has been accepted in the journal Evolution. Excellent news! |
| 15 Dec. Join in for the last lab meeting this year. See Sharath’s farewell talk and an end-of-year summary by Klaus (no replacement for real Christmas party either) |
| 14 Dec. Lennart’s research on net selection in the animal kingdom is covered by the Uni-Journal – the university-wide weekly newspaper. Great press coverage. |
| 13 Dec. Mission accomplished! Thanks to everyone who helped in the lab clean and who provided mulled wine and/or Plätzchen at lovely Beutlerpark for afterwards (of course it could be no replacement for a real Christmas party). |
 30 Nov. First of tudaz’ (now daily?) 20-min lab strolls during coffee break with some unexpected (but not realised) temptations. |
| 2 Nov. Many congratulations to Lennart who with colleagues, had their paper accepted in elife – “Stronger net selection on males across animals“. That’s a very big achievement, congratulations Lennart! Link. |
| 2 Nov. Martin speaking in the ZooPrimeTimeTalks on “Evolutionary divergence and constraint on the male ejaculate“. Drosophila, that is. |
| 26 Oct. Many congratulations to Anne who today successfully defended her Master thesis Impact of seminal fluid on metabolic activity of sperm cells in bed bugs, Cimex lectularius. Great work, Anne and best of luck for the future. |
| 23 Oct. Many congratulations to Christoph and Ariane – their paper is out in Insect Science: “Characterisation and mode of action analysis of black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) larva derived haemocytes“. Link |
| 21 Oct. Farewell to one of the longest tudaz members – Barbara – and best of luck for her future, which, hopefully, will be close to our group… Fingers crossed, Dr Eckel! |
 13 Oct. A big welcome to Dr Martin Garlovsky who has arrived in Dresden after 800 miles and many months of waiting time… https://twitter.com/MartinGarlovsky/status/1448378037951778818. Avery warm welcome, Martin! |
| 11-15 Oct. An intense introductory away-week with the MSc students of Biology in Society. see also https://twitter.com/tudaz2/status/1449092341931839489 AND https://twitter.com/tudaz2/status/1449092347652984832 |
 4 Oct. The small exhibition opens about the newly sorted Zoological teaching collection, organised by Stefanie Wiedmer. |
| 10 Sep. Congratulations to Elisa for successfully passing her BSc defence on diet and mito-nuclear interaction effects in Drosophila. |
| 9 Sep. Accepted. The first complete list of wild scale insects (Coccina) found in Saxony, with 20 new species for the state, has been accepted for publication in Entomologische Nachrichten und Berichte. Coauthors are Klaus and Christian Schmidt, who helped in the Insects course. |
| 1 Sep. A publication resulting from Klaus’ student course has been published. The study found the world’s largest population of an antlion species near Dresden. Download and read it here. |
| 18 Aug. Congratulations to Daria for successfully passing her BSc on Dynamics of sexually transmitted microbes and the effect of male genital complexity. |
| 13 Aug. Fighting the negative Friday-the-13th myth with simply great news: Congratulation to Christian and collaborators for having accepted their paper in a rock-solid microscopy journal. “Seminal fluid, and sperm diluent, affect sperm metabolism in an insect: evidence from NAD(P)H and FAD autofluorescence lifetime imaging” is to appear in Microscopy Research and Technique. Very well done everyone! –> The baby is out on 6 Sept (link) |
| 9 Aug. A very warm welcome to Sharath who will be doing an internship in our group, on the molecular biology of the immunity of the bedbug copulatory organ. |
| 29 July. DFG funding obtained to look at the effects of diet on mito-nuclear interactions. We will be able to hire a PhD student… More to come soon. |
| 27 July. Congratulations to Suse. Her work in the Brankatschk lab was so important that she is co-author on the publication Prince et al. DIlp7-Producing Neurons Regulate Insulin-Producing Cells in Drosophila, published in Frontiers in Physiology. Link |
| 23 July. Long-digested article submitted! |
| 14 July. Congratulations to ChristianM, Klaus and the collaborators in Bayreuth, Prague and Brno – “Male diet affects female fitness and sperm competition in human- and bat-associated lineages of the common bedbug, Cimex lectularius” has been accepted in Scientific Reports |
| 12 July. tudaz paper # 100 – many congratulations to Susi and Luise for the acceptance of their paper Differences in temperature-sensitive expression of PcG-regulated genes among natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster, accepted in G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. Wow ONE HUNDRED SINCE NOV 2014 |
| 1 July. The first student project in the Insects course has gone public: the species profile of the Cabbage Whitefly for Insekten-Sachsen has been published, authored by two students of the course who do their project on it. Link (German). |
| 1 July. The second half of the year 2021 starts with a big catch for tudaz. More news as soon as the big catch has signed the contract. Great news. |
| 29 Jun. Klaus in an interview with Deutsche Welle on the Wissenschaftszeitgesetz. |
| 9 Jun. Welcome to Ronja who today successfully passed her Forschungspraktikum and will start her Bachelor work on The effects of population density on sexual selection in Tribolium beetles. |
| 3 Jun. Don’t miss seeing Oli and Klaus eating döner – in the little advertisement video clip for the Biology in Society Master on youtube. Link. |
| 1 June. Welcome to Jannick, student helper in the lab, currently supporting David’s research. |
| 19 May Welcome to Daria who will start her Bachelor work in our group on Microbes and genitalia complexity. |
| 12 May. Welcome back, Barbara! Sperm-microbe interactions are waiting to be deciphered. |
| 12 May. Update talk Lennart, and interim progress report by project student Daria in the lab meeting. |
| 10 May. The Insects course has started, the first course in ages where students will do some practical work in the laboratories, species identification in this case. The course runs in connection with Matthias Nuss and Christian Schmidt from the Senckenberg Museum. Both are also collaborators on projects and publications. |
| 27 Apr. Article Production and scavenging of reactive oxygen species both affect reproductive success in male and female Drosophila melanogaster is out in Biogerontology. Link |
| 24 Apr. Watch out! Three student participants of our Insects Course who wrote small papers on their research projects now present at a little conference on Insects of Saxony! Among them our now-student-helper Johannes Link |
| 23 Apr. Welcome to Elisa who will do the Bachelor project in our lab, distentangling the role of the mitochondrial and nuclear genome, and diet on Drosophila development. |
| 19 Apr. Congratulations to Johannes, our student helper for having his small research project of the Insects Course published in Sächsische Entomologische Zeitschrift. Link. |
| 15 Apr. Finally, all lectures of Fundamentals of Evolution and Biodiversity have been uploaded as .m4v files into OPAL, thanks to Steffi for help with that totally non-intuitive system. |
| 7 Apr. Data paper in BMC Research Notes published. Link. Congratulations again to Biz who took the lead, and to student helper Luisa’s first scientific paper. Title of paper – see 29 Mar below. |
| 6/7 Apr. Lennart is presenting a talk and representing our group at the Behaviour Ecology and Evolution Meeting at the University of Oxford. |
| 2 Apr. Congratulations to Biz and student helper Luisa on the acceptance of “Production and scavenging of reactive oxygen species both affect reproductive success in male and female Drosophila melanogaster“, to appear in Biogerontology. |
| 25 Mar. Congratulations to associate researcher Tim on the publication of “The scope for postmating sexual selection in plants” that appeared in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. |
| 29 Mar. Congratulations to Biz, student helper Luisa and collaborator Ance Ribou on the acceptance of a small paper “Somatic production of reactive oxygen species does not predict its production in sperm cells across Drosophila melanogaster lines“, to appear in BMC Research Notes. |
| 10 Mar. Welcome to Emma who successfully passed the Vertiefungsmodul and so will be doing her Bachelor thesis in our lab, supervised by Lennart on Sex-specific variance in response to heat stress in Tribolium. Good luck, Emma. |
| 9 Mar. Welcome to Johannes who will be working with us as a student research assistant (SHK), to help with teaching and research in FAD Autofluorescence in sperm metabolism. |
| 2 Mar. Three small articles in one volume of Articulata, the journal of the German Society of Orthopterology (that’s grasshopper and cricket fans): bushcricket nymphs eating pollen, kites as aerial predators of bushcrickets, and on the occasion of Prof. Köhler’s (Jena) 70th birthday. See Publications for pdfs. |
| 28 Feb. Farewell to almost-long-term student research assistant Anastasia who worked on microbial effects on cricket sperm. Best of luck for the future, Anastasia! |
| 10 Feb. Well done Anne. Very good talk on The use of NADH and FAD autofluorescence to characterise sperm storage in bedbugs. And welcome! Anne joins us as a Master student. Good luck with your project on The effect of male diet and female storage on sperm metabolism. |
| 1 Feb. A very warm welcome to Christoph who joins us a postdoc from today. Insect haemocytes and the evolution of the haematopoietic tissue. The bedbugs are ready to go, Christoph! |
| 22 Jan. Great news, joint projects with Marko Brankatschk from the BIOTEC, Adam Dobson from Glasgow, and Stuart Wigby from Liverpool have been funded within the Lab2Lab programme of the Graduate Academy. We all hope for a lively exchange of PhD students and ideas to start soon. Our contribution to f*** Brexit. |
19 Jan. Congratulations Dr Ahmed. You’ve done it. Great work, great thesis, great defence talk – simply amazing Reda! Tweet. Best of luck for the future! |
| 11 Jan. Slow start of the year. Those who are not in home office – anyone for lab removal? The year started well, one resubmitted manuscript, one sent out for review…, ok one was also rejected but re-submitted straight away. |
| 1 Jan. [14 Dec 2020] The monthly magazine “Das Magazin” publishes Klaus’ reportage about a company in the UK that mass-produces bedbugs – CimexStore of our collaborator R. Naylor. Worth a read if you are Harry Potter fan. pdf. |
| 1 Jan. Very best of luck to Alex, Frank, Michelle, Nadja, Rebecca who will be joining the Environmental Monitoring and Endocrinology Lab (EME). Thank you all so much – it has been great working with you! And we will carry on doing so, of course. |
| 1 Jan. [14 Dec 2020 – as working from home had long started] HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone! |
2020
| 18 Dec. No Christmas party, of course not. Instead a small look back on an eventful year. Join via zoom link if you’re interested. Meeting ID: 823 2876 8047, Passcode: 2a!*ym |
| 9 Dec. tudaz labs largely closed down. Thanks to everyone who helps to keep the animals alive and happy during the lockdown and the festive season. |
| 9 Dec. Published: “Sperm viability varies with buffer and genotype in Drosophila melanogaster“ in the journal Fly. Link |
 1 Dec. A small paper on the butterfly fauna of the site of our field trip in the Rhön, again with a student contribution. Congratulations to Lucas for these beautiful genitalia images, and his second paper with our group. Link to paper. |
| 4 Nov. Interested in bedbug parasites? Do they have any? Very few. See small paper in the journal dealing with biology of bugs, Heteropteron. Link. |
| 1 Nov. Farewell to Biz! Many thanks for all your work, good luck with the pending submissions and all the very best – we will stay in touch. |
| 27 Oct. Accepted! Many congratulations to Barbara for having accepted a co-authored paper Diversity of Resilin matrices in Drosophila melanogaster, in BMC Biology. TUDaz paper no. 25 this year. Not so bad! |
| 16 Oct. An amazing outcome of the Insects course in June: 6 out of 11 field projects are potentially publishable in the local entomological journal Sächsische Entomologische Zeitschrift, plus possibly another 2 requiring a little more extra work. |
| 15 Oct. Farewell to Luise and all the best for the future. |
| 8 Oct. Accepted! “Sperm viability varies with buffer and genotype in Drosophila melanogaster“ is to be published in the journal Fly. Congratulations to Ruijian and Anna-Lena! |
 6 Oct. SUBMITTED! Reda submitted her PhD thesis “Chitinase encoding genes in Drosophila melanogaster: expression, distribution, and function”. Another amazing TUDaz moment. Well done and fingers crossed for exam and reviews! |
| 30 Sept. We are lucky to have it also in 2020: TUDaz Walk & Wine. This year around Radebeul – cheers. Thank you to Suse for organising it. The Hoflößnitz Johanniter was voted first by most. photo. |
| 30 Sept. Lennart is representing our group at the [online] Graduate meeting of the German Zoological Society: Stronger net selection on males across the animal kingdom. |
| 22 Sept. Published! Sex differences in bedbug nymphs, Cimex lectularius. Congratulations again to MSc student Lucas and technician Christin. Link. |
| 8 Sept. Farewell to Dresden Senior Fellow Stuart Wigby. Thanks for staying with us, Stu. Best of luck in Liverpool, and keep in touch. |
| 1 Sept. Congratulations to MSc student Lucas and to Christin for having a paper accepted in Journal of Applied Entomology entitled “Sex differences in bedbug nymphs, Cimex lectularius” – the first we can now sex nymphs. |
| 1 Sept. Welcome to Rebecca who started today to work with Alex on an ecotoxicological project, the bioinformatic analysis of stem cell expression in fish. |
| 31 Aug. Farewell to Conni and best of luck from the group in her new job. |
| 14 Aug. New postdoc position in our group announced. Links to German and English version of the text. Please spread the word, the deadline was set too tight, please get in touch if you can’t make the deadline. |
| 4 Aug. Published! Congratulations to Alex. Following the adverse outcome pathway from micronucleus to cancer using H2B-eGFP transgenic healthy stem cells is out in Archives of Toxicology. Link |
 31 July. Farewell and best of luck to Marta – thanks for your help throughout those weird times, Marta! |
| 25 July. Congratulations to Ralph for co-authoring a paper Effects of Temperature on Lifespan of Drosophila melanogaster from Different Genetic Backgrounds: Links between Metabolic Rate and Longevity published in Insects. Link |
| 24 July. Two written exams simultaneously Fundamentals of Evolution and Biodiversity (BSc MBBT) and Evolution (BSc Biology). All at 11:10. |
| 23 July. 3 pm outside – come and join coffee and cake to wish Marta farewell. Keep your distance. |
 22 July. Look who is smiling!
Congratulations Dr Eckel – excellent thesis and defence Sperm quality, sperm storage and fertility in male and female Drosophila. |
| 21 July. Welcome back, Stu! And the luggage you brought with you is so amazing!!! Many congratulations! |
| 17 July. Written Exam Biological Diversity and Systematics. |
| 16 July. Out! Teaching changes interest and attitudes of students towards bedbugs” for the International Journal of Science Education, a collaborative study with colleagues from Munster University. Link |
| 10 July. Out! Michelle’s and collaborators’ paper in Frontiers in Endocrinology. link. |
| 9 July. Many congratulations to Veronika and colleagues: her paper IRONSperm: Sperm-templated soft magnetic microrobots has just appeared in Science Advances. Link. Outstanding achievement! And tudaz’ biggest shot for the year – or anyone taking the challenge? |
 9 July. Probably Klaus’ biggest achievement since his start in Dresden nearly 6 yrs ago – a larger tea kitchen – more or less completed today: removal, cleaning, stuff in and out – with the help of many. A big thanks to ChristianK for overseeing everything and today’s helpers. Sofa to follow soon. Some symbolic pieces of raspberry cake (thanks Marta!) have been eaten and some symbolic drops of sparkling wine (thanks Ruijian) have been spilled on the floor today. Proper ‘house warming’ to come later. Boys’ changing room now in old tea kitchen – even that looks better. |
| save the date 22 July. 11:00 Barbara’s public online defence. Sperm quality, sperm storage and fertility in male and female Drosophila. |
| 9 July. 10:00 Q&A sesson (=Konsultation) Population and Conservation Genetics course in front of the Biology building, by Heiko Stuckas. |
| 7 July. One-day field trip of the Biological Diversity and Systematics course. |
| 5 July. Population and Conservation Genetics Course starts. Online, run by Heiko Stuckas. |
| 25 June. Accepted! “Teaching changes interest and attitudes of students towards bedbugs” for the International Journal of Science Education, a collaborative study with colleagues from Munster University. TUDaz’ peer-reviewed publication #10 this year. And thanks to Christin who was in charge of the beasts, back then. |
| 23 June. Out now: Identification and age-dependence of pteridines in bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) and bat bugs (C. pipistrelli) using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Link to the paper in Scientific Reports. |
| 16 June. Welcome back, Robert! |
| 15 June. Biological Diversity and Systematics Course has started. |
| 5 June. Excellent news, many congratulations to Michelle, Alex, Frank and collaborators, and already some champagne – their paper An ex vivo approach to study hormonal control of spermatogenesis in the teleost Oreochromis niloticus has been accepted in Frontiers in Endocrinology. |
| 3 June. One-day field trips for the Insects course now available for online registration on very short notice. |
| 29 May. And still more good news: the first paper of the GACR-DFG collaborative project with colleagues in Bayreuth, Brno and Prague has been accepted. Identification and age-dependence of pteridines in bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) and bat bugs (C. pipistrelli) using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry by Jana Kremenova and colleagues is to appear in Scientific Reports. |
| 28 May. More good news! We will have Biz back for a few months. Welcome back Biz! |
| 19 May. Congratulations to Barbara for submitting her thesis on Sperm quality, sperm storage and fertility in male and female Drosophila! Wow, well done Barbara, some of us remember that feeling… |
| 28 May. Best of luck to Irene who will leaving the group towards the end of May. Thanks for your help, Irene! |
| 26 May. Professor Reinhardt with new office hours, Wed 14-15. online. See above. |
| 20 May. Distant congratulations to Veronika for having a paper published in Small, Sperm-driven micromotors moving in oviduct fluid and viscoelastic media. Link |
| 13 May. First steps towards the online course Insects. This year – an ecofaunistic recording project. |
| 10 May. The new topics for Bachelor and Master theses have been announced! Others are possible – just see the respective supervisors. |
| 5 May. Phantastic news for Dresden Senior Fellow Dr Stuart Wigby. Congratulations on the job – simply brilliant news, Stu! |
| 5 May. Good luck in Barcelona, Veronika! |
| 30 Apr. Belated congratulations to our Dresden Senior Fellow Stu on his latest paper Structural variation in Drosophila melanogaster spermathecal ducts and its association with sperm competition dynamics, published in Royal Society Open Science. Link. |
| 28 Apr. Last of the 25-45 Min lectures of Basics of Evolution and Biodiversity uploaded. |
| 18 Apr. Finally, The Evolution course now also partly online, linked to the online lecture of Basics of Evolution and Biodiversity. |
| 18 Apr. Published. Metabolic rate and oxygen radical levels increase but radical generation rate decreases with male age in Drosophila melanogaster sperm in Journal of Gerontology A. Congratulations to Biz! Link |
| 17 Apr. Last year’s Dresden Fellow, Dr Adam Dobson, Univ of Glasgow provides his lecture on Diet, ageing and evolution to the Basics of Evolution and Biodiversity Course online. Thank you Adam! |
| 15 Apr. Veronika’s last lab meeting, and sort of her last day. She bode a touching farewell: a video-live goodbye song to all of us on the piano Here today, tomorrow there by Hannes Wader (heute hier, morgen dort…). Good luck Veronika, it was an enormous pleasure to hosting you. |
| 9 Apr. Course Grundlagen der Evolution und Biodiversität now online, partly anyway. |
| 6 Apr. Tutorial Zoology is running online. |
| 1 Apr. A very warm welcome to Suse who will join us from today, forever, so to say. We all look forward to meeting you in person. Another cake occasion that needs to be postponed. |
| 1 Apr. Welcome “back”, Reda! Fingers crossed for writing up. |
| 1 Apr. Lucas, a long-time student helper joins us again, briefly to not help in the Evolution and Biodiversity practical. Welcome back (remote of course), Lucas! |
| 31 Mar. Goodbye and good luck to Luisa who worked in our lab for ages, as a student helper, and for the Vertiefungsmodul. Around now-ish she will officially leave the group to start her Master project in Kiel. Thank you for your hard work, Luisa and for your uplifting spirits. We will miss you – that’s a fact. Cake better in a few months… |
| 25 Mar. Next good news. Congratulations to Alex for winning a 2-yr grant to study endocrine disruption in fish. |
| 24 Mar. First and great step back to “normal”: Many congratulations to Biz for having his paper accepted in Journal of Gerontology A. “Metabolic rate and oxygen radical levels increase but radical generation rate decreases with male age in Drosophila melanogaster sperm”. |
19 Mar. TUDaz labs closed.  1. No surprise but DON’T TAKE IT EASY. IT’S A LETHAL VIRUS. Infection rate in Saxony still as predicted (number of cases over time) – see graph. Just stay at home. 2. Emergency animal care plan in place. Do not enter the labs unless you are registered to do so. Inform Klaus about it. 3. Research focus is currently on analysis. 4. Teaching solutions will be found – don’t worry, dear students. See here for some information. 5. For news see here for the biology and the TU central site. |
9 Mar. An important date to mark the substantial changes ahead of us in the Institute of Zoology. Welcome words by the Head of Department. Klaus will be speaking about the History of Zoology in Dresden. Lovely buffet, TU’s own Lohrmann beer and discussions afterwards.  |
| 5 Mar. Congratulations to Lennart for winning the second prize for best talk at the Wittenberg PhD student meeting! Sex-specific genetic variation for fitness. |
3-5 Mar. Barbara, Christian, Lennart, Klaus, as well as Jana from the Bartonicka lab in Brno are off to the now 4th! PhD student meeting. Dresden Fellow Stuart Wigby joins us as Invited Speaker. Link to meeting. Post-meeting impression: Klaus among the ladies from the Women’s Gossip Guided Tour: Katharina von Bora (left), Agnes Cranach (right) and Magdalena (????). More serious impressions from the meeting will follow shortly by Justyna Wolinska.  |
| 1 Mar. Published! Lab alumnus Renata Zuber co-authored a paper in PLoS Genetics. Link. The fifth TUDaz paper this year! If this rate goes on… god beware. |
| 29 Feb. Interview with Klaus on his experiences as an Open Topics Professor at TU Dresden. Link. |
| 27 Feb. Paper out! With collaborators from Australia: Interactions between cytoplasmic and nuclear genomes confer sex‐specific effects on lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster. in Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Congratulations to Ralph and Susi from our group. Link. |
3 – 5 Feb. Welcome to Deepali, who does a 3-months project with Veronika. Welcome to Marta, our new secretary. Welcome to Stuart, a senior Dresden Fellow who chose our lab as his host laboratory. Stu’s lab is here. |
| 4 Feb. Paper out Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids affect volume and metabolism of Drosophila melanogaster sperm. Link. |
| 25 Jan. Sperm Biology Course Announcement in English. Link. |
| 20 -31 Jan. Advanced Microscopy Course is running. Link. |
| 8 Jan. Press release for Conni’s paper is out (in German, English). |
| 8 Jan. Many congratulations to Ruijian for having had accepted the first chapter of his PhD thesis. Excellent news that Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids affect volume and metabolism of Drosophila melanogaster sperm has been accepted in Journal of evolutionary Biology. |
| 7 Jan. Lab Cleaning Day. Hooray. |
 6 Jan. Welcome to Shivani who will join us for a six-months internship project Investigating male fertility in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster using microscopy-based techniques. |
| 3 Jan. See Michelle‘s and Lennart‘s websites. |
| 2 Jan. HAPPY NEW YEAR! |
| 1 Jan. Welcome to Alex who joins us from today. Alex works on Developmental Effects and the Evolution of Sex Chromosomes. Soon more to come here. |
2019 TUDaz
 20 Dec. Wonderful Christmas present to the group – out just now: Distinct metabolic profiles in Drosophila sperm and somatic tissues revealed by two-photon NAD(P)H and FAD autofluorescence lifetime imaging. Link. Many congratulations, Conni! |
| 18 Dec. Congratulations to ourselves! We just heard that Stuart Wigby from Oxford was awarded a Dresden Senior Fellowship and will stay with us for 6 months, starting in February. Stu’s website. |
 17 Dec. A piece of tudaz history – Ruijian’s defence, tudaz’s first PhD student. Genetic and environmental components of sperm function in Drosophila. Congratulations Dr Guo! |
| 10 Dec. See the announcement of the new course, run by Veronika in March on Sperm Biology – sperm robots, sperm diversity, sperm metabolism. Link. |
| 9 Dec. Michelle is presenting her work in the ZooPrimeTimeTalks on Gene expression, hormones and dominance in Tilapia |
| 8 Dec. Congratulations to Tim and collaborators on their great paper in American Naturalist. “Assortative Mating in Animals and Its Role for Speciation“. Link |
| 8 Dec. Good sperm, bad sperm – see extensive press coverage of Veronika‘s work in Sächsische Zeitung. Link (paywall). |
| 3 Dec. Wow, what a day. A) Congratulations to Lennart for sailing through his TAC meeting. B) Congratulations to Conni on the acceptance of her paper in Scientific Reports “Distinct metabolic profiles in Drosophila sperm and somatic tissues revealed by two-photon NAD(P)H and FAD autofluorescence lifetime imaging“. C) A paper submitted. D) We are hosting Holger Schielzeth for the Biological Seminar Series Evolutionary Ecology of grasshoppers with a focus on the green-brown polymorphism. Join us for a beer afterwards. |
| 29 Nov. Feeling blue? See Tag24’s contribution on Veronika’s research about good sperm. Mostly blue. Link |
| 28 Nov. See TU Dresden press release on Veronika’s paper. Link. Paper (with Clara, Barbara and colleagues from CZ Republic) here. |
| 27 Nov. Congratulations to Anastasia for successfully defending her Bachelor thesis on the sperm microbiome in crickets. |
| 20 Nov. Conni’s new course Advanced Microscopy announced. See Link. |
| 5 Nov. Klaus’ Quick Guide Bedbugs out in Current Biology – link to tweet. |
4 Nov. Almost the entire new group plus a soon-to-be-member are on the Official Unification Lab Trip. Visiting the Senckenberg frog, insect and bird collections before riding the 10-seater bicycles, hopefully all towards a similar direction.  |
| 1 Nov. The largest Welcome! ever, paralleling another official start of Applied Zoology at TU Dresden – TUDaz. Officially 31 members now. All with new contract or new to our group. An official and warm welocme to Robert, Suse, Yvonne, Lukas, Luise, Frank, Michelle, Nadja, Irene and Madlen. The real welcome will be later for some people. Welcome back Anja – thank you for the emergency help! The website of the group is now awaiting a major overhaul. |
2019 tudaz
| 31 Oct. Farewell to Ralph – it has been phantastic to work with you, which including Tübingen amounts to nine years. Farewell to Anja who will join the Head of Department’s office. Anja, it had been amazing to work with. Thank you both and very best of luck! |
| 25 Oct. Veronika gives an invited talk in Munich – in the Electronics Department! |
| 24 Oct. Excellent (as usual) cheese fondue chez Dobler, though slightly sad occasion. |
| 24 Oct. Tons of people in our group finally have their contract signed for the next 4-6 years. |
| 24 Oct. Klaus receiving his contract from 1 Nov 2019 onwards. |
| 23 Oct. Farewell to Dresden Fellow Adam Dobson who is leaving the group after successful 6 mo of research. Good luck in Glasgow, Dr Dobson! |
| 21 Oct. Klaus gives a public talk in Bremen at the Überseemuseum in the Insects series. |
| 10 Oct. Out! The motility-based swim-up technique separates bull spermbased on differences in metabolic rates and tail length. published in PLoS ONE. Congratulations Veronika and Link |
| 4 Oct. Online! The cuticle inward barrier in Drosophila melanogaster is shaped by mitochondrial and nuclear genotypes and a sex-specific effect of diet by Ralph, lab alumni Wei and Bernard, and collaborator Damian published in PeerJ. Link |
| 2 Oct. Welcome to the new lab members (as Lennart put it): Tribolium castaneum, including Reindeer and Chicago Black. |
| 27 Sept. Breaking news: Ruijian Guo, tudaz’ first PhD student submitted his PhD thesis. Many congratulations Ruijian! 恭喜! |
| 26 Sept. Boat trip and wine tasting – our last official tudaz event and (as it turns out premature) farewell to Ruijian. |
| 25 Sept. Accepted! Congratulations to Veronika, Clara, Barbara and Klaus for the acceptance of their paper “The motility-based swim-up technique separates bull sperm based on differences in metabolic rates and tail length” in the journal PLOS ONE. |
 9-12 Sept. Conni with talk, Barbara and Klaus with posters representing tudaz at Biology of Spermatozoa in Nyvasgard near Stockholm. photograph: O.Otti – thanks! |
| 4 Sept. Accepted! Congratulations to Ralph, lab alumni Wei and Bernard and collaborator Damian for their paper accepted in PeerJ: “The cuticle inward barrier in Drosophila melanogaster is shaped by mitochondrial and nuclear genotypes and a sex-specific effect of diet” |
| 3 Sept. Online. Klaus’ publication in a local insect journal – the first finding of the strepsipteran Xenos vesparum in Saxony. Link to paper. Twitter link. |
| 31 Aug. MDR Aktuell has a short audio clip on the evolution of blood sucking. Link to the clip and the text. |
| 22 Aug. The Saale Zeitung has a short report about our joint field trip to the Rhön, wth the University of Tübingen. Link |
| 21 Aug. Many congratulations to Vanessa who successfully defended her Bachelor thesis on temperature effects on Drosophila sperm. |
| 9 Aug. Average exam mark for Ecology was 2.3 plus one fail. Curiously, some answers were correct to last year’s questions. |
| 7 Aug. Quite a sad day: the average exam mark for Evolution was 2.6 – few people correctly answered why human races don’t exist. |
| 28 July. Published early online – paper with colleagues from Bayreuth Bacterial communities of the reproductive organs of virgin and mated common bedbugs, Cimex lectularius, in Ecological Entomology. Link |
| 24 July. Published. Congratulations to Veronika and Johannes for their paper in Advanced Biosystems on “Sperm–particle interactions and their prospects for charge mapping” Link. Also coverage in Hot Topic: Surfaces and Interfaces. |
| 10 July. Welcome! After a phantastic talk on local adaptation on the microbiome in wild field crickets, Anastasia will join our lab as a Bachelor student. |
| 5 July. Published. Biz’ and Klaus’ commentary in Functional Ecology on male and sperm ageing is out. Sperm ageing: a complex business. Link |
| 3 July. Great lecture by our resident Dresden Fellow Adam Dobson on Ageing, Evolution and Diet. |
| 1 July. Welcome! Lennart, supervised by Tim Janicke, joins our group as a PHD student to look at Condition-dependence of sexual selection. |
| 25 June. Accepted! Congratulations to Susi for getting her paper accepted in Genes: “Decreased Temperature Sensitivity of Vestigial Gene Expression in Temperate Populations of Drosophila melanogaster“. |
| 19 June. Paper published in J. Exp. Biol., with colleagues from Botany and from Kiel Evidence for a sexually selected function of the attachment system in bedbugs Cimex lectularius. Link (50 downloads). |
| 18 June. New opportunity for Betriebspraktikum in Norway just came in. Link. |
| 14 June. Lots of stuff to see from our group at the Dresden Science Night (Lange nach der Wissenschaften). Topics range from sperm live microscopy to a sperm quiz, a sperm race for children to cool facts about bedbugs and even the link of fruit flies to 3-parent babies. Big thanks to Conni and Veronika for putting this together! |
| 4 June. First lecture by our Dresden Fellow Dr Adam Dobson on “The ecology of animal-microbe interactions”. |
| 29 May. Our very cool video abstract for the bedbug phylogeny paper, made by Ondrej, is now online. Watch it here. |
| 29 May. Our tudaz team of four supporting the Zoology Team of the TU Dresden at the 5 km run – Dresden Team Challenge event. |
| 21 – 23 May. We are on retreat in Sluknov. |
| 16 May. Published. Our study on the phylogeny of bedbugs – almost overwhelming press coverage – Science, New York Times, BBC, CNN, as well as local radio station MDR. Coverage: see here. |
| 14 May. Early bird… Small bird song excursion. Start: 5.30 (a.m.!). |
| 1 May. Welcome! Dr Adam Dobson joins our group as a Dresden fellow to work on “Diet, Mitochondria, Ageing and Disease”. Welcome reception on 10 May. |
| 29 Apr. Accepted: Our manuscript, co-authored by Dagmar from Botany and Stas Gorb from Kiel, “Evidence for a sexually selected function of the attachment system in bedbugs Cimex lectularius (Heteroptera, Cimicidae)” has been accepted in Journal of Experimental Biology. We are not telling anyone that most data were collected in 2005. |
| 22 Apr. ‘Accepted’: Welcome to Vanessa who after successful defence of her Bachelor plan joins our group as a Bachelor student. She will study the effect of temperature and thermal adaptation on sperm quality in Drosophila. |
| 18 Apr. Accepted: Bedbugs (Cimicidae) Evolved Before Their Bat Hosts and Did Not Co-Speciate with Ancient Humans is to appear in Current Biology. 12 years of sample collection, 2 years of analysis, 1 year of submission rounds to 5 journals. |
| 12 Apr. Klaus with the Rektor of the TU. The most important day for tudaz. Outcome to be announced. |
| 12 Apr. tudaz in Science: Biz, Conni, Klaus and Ralph signed a letter supporting the notion that the goals of the Fridays for Future Movement are scientifically justified. |
| 10 Apr. Accepted: Our little primer ‘Sperm ageing: a complex business’ by Klaus and Biz is to appear in Functional Ecology. Thanks to the sperm group for reading and discussing! |
| 29 Mar. Published: A new species recorded for Dresden: the tree cricket (and its lovely sound), by Klaus Reinhardt et al. in the Saxon. Entomol. J. (the submitted ms matured two years…). |
| 18 – 29 Mar. Animal Behaviour Course. |
| 14 -16 Mar. Barbara and Ruijian join Christian and Klaus in Bayreuth for the Third (Bi)(Inter)national PhD student meeting. All PhD students are presenting. Programme is here. |
| 13 Mar. Christian and Klaus off to Brno, Prague and Bayreuth collaborators on the Sperm and Speciation grant. |
| 12 Feb. Come and join the interview talks by the three candidates for Tim’s project Sexual Selection and Local Adaptation. 9-12 roughly. |
| 5 Feb. Happy New Year of the Pig, Ruijian! Come and join the lab’s Chinese New Year dinner – thanks for organising, Ruijian! |
| 26 Jan. Our paper on quorum sensing of bacteria from different reproductive organs in bedbugs, written for kids, is online in Frontiers for Young Minds. – Do Bacteria Change Their Language When They Enter the Body Through Wounds? Answers From Bedbug Experiments |
| 16 Jan. A great day for Applied Zoology indeed: We will be hosting Adam Dobson from UCL. A very warm welcome, Dr Dobson. |
| 15 Jan. Application deadline for Tim’s PhD position has ended today. Missed it? Email him if you are strong candidate. |
| 3 Jan. Our paper on quorum sensing in bedbug reproductive organs, written for, and reviewed by 12-to-16-yrs-olds has been accepted in Frontiers for Young Minds. |
2018
| 18 Dec. Congratulations to Reda for a wrap-up fellowship of the Graduate Academy. |
| 13 Dec. Undetected, Unwanted, Undefeated – see Klaus’ paper on bedbug biology in German in Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau. Link |
| 12 -14 Dec. Veronika gives research seminars in Birmingham and Cambridge. |
| 9 Dec. Probably our most important day. Link. |
5 Dec. tudaz Christmay party, with Fool’s Prize Award to ***shush***, hand-made linocuts by Anja, Stollen, Thrashwichteln, and a romantic tour through Pirna with enthusiastic, local and round wulf-Bärbel. Mulled wine later. Briefly high-jacked the stage on Pirna’s Christmas market. |
| 4 Dec. Klaus’ article summarising new developments in bedbug research is out (in German): Undetected, Unliked, Undefeated in Naturwissenschafltiche Rundschau. |
| 4 Dec. Today’s Seminar speaker Martina Galikova from Stockholm on In search of a fly glucagon: Hunger, thirst and energy metabolism in Drosophila. Abstract. |
| 29 Nov. See the new PhD position in our group, announced by Tim Janicke on the Role of Sexual Selection on Local Adaptation. See here for details. |
| 27 Nov. Today’s Seminar speaker Manuela Nowotny from Frankfurt/ Jena on Acoustic Behaviour and Sensory Adaptation in Bushcrickets (in German). Link. |
| 5 -9 Nov. Conni is presenting her work on Sperm Metabolism Measurements using FLIM at the 8th Advanced Optical Methods Workshop in Shenshen. As an Invited Speaker and apparently brilliantly so! See whether you can spot her. |
| 7 Nov. See the list of BSc and MSc projects in our group. Link. |
| 8 Nov. Sprechstunde with Professor Reinhardt must be cancelled. Please use next week’s hours. |
| 5 Nov. Klaus discusses adaptations at an International Symposium on Transcultural Adaptations, with a human geographer, a film scientist, a linguist, and an anglist. Link. |
| 1 Nov. Happy 4th birthday, tudaz! |
| 4 Oct. The Institute of Zoology organises the Graduate Farewell Event. Come and see our guest speaker Jens Krause on “Biology and social networks” and join the reception afterwards. |
| 4 Oct. Congratulations to Reda on her publication Mitochondrial DNA‐Based Identification of Developmental Stages and Empty Puparia of Forensically Important Flies (Diptera) in Egypt, published in J Forens Sci Med. Link |
| 1 Oct. Welcome to Christian who joins us as a PhD student to employ optical methods of sperm metabolism to the analyse The role of sperm function in speciation in bedbug host races. |
| 26 Sept. Have a look at the new lecture series of microswimmers run by Veronika and others. Link. |
| 25 Sept. Welcome to Anna-Lena, Tom and Christina who have joined us as student helpers on various projects over the last two weeks. |
| 14 Sept. Many congratulations to Barbara for winning the Evolutionary Biology Poster Prize at the DZG meeting The role of spermathecal secretory cells in female sperm storage. Link |
| 13 Sept. Many congratulations to Susi but for data protection reasons we don’t say why. |
| 7 Sept. Accepted! Collaborative study The cytoplasm affects the epigenome in Drosophila melanogaster by Ralph, Susi and Klaus with colleagues in France and Australia has been accepted for publication in Epigenomes. Link to publication here. |
| 5 Sept. Welcome to Stefanie who successfully passed her presentation today and so will be joining us for her BSc thesis to examine The effect of diet on sperm volume and quality in D.melanogaster. |
28 August. A significant day: the female of Asiagomphus reinhardti has been described from Vietnam. Isn’t it beautiful? The protruding eggs at the tip of the abdomen raise hope for a next generation of A. reinhardti…  Link to original publication. |
| 25 August. Many congratulations to Tim for winning a DFG grant for his own position to be joining us with Sexual Selection as an engine of adaptation to changing environments. |
23/24 August. Klaus in Brno to meet with collaborators of the Sperm and Speciation grant.  And with a stork. |
| 18-23 August. Ralph is representing us with a poster at the European-American joint evolution meeting ESEB. |
| 16 August. Ecology beats Evolution, by far: best exam results since I started (average of 1.7). |
| 15 August. Exam results are out for Evolution – with a somewhat disheartening average of 2.8. |
| 11 August. Biz representing tudaz at ISBE 2018 in Minneapolis. |
| 27 July. Very successful contribution by our group to the German Zool Soc meeting in Greifswald: four talks, one poster! |
| 26 July. Evolution exam. |
| 24 July. Ecology exam. |
| 16 July. Book published: Bedbug, by ReaktionBooks London/ Chicago Univ Press. Link |
| 14 July. Congratulations on a flat 10/10 for Praneetha’s thesis. |
| 4 July. Farewell to Praneetha who did her Master’s thesis in our lab. Good luck for the defence, Praneetha. |
| 2 to 7 July. Klaus is representing Applied Zoology at the European Congress of Entomology in Naples. |
| 1 July. Farewell and good luck to our exchange students Sara and Cristiano from Porto. |
| 27 June. Paper out! Among insects Wolbachia is uniquely symbiotic in bedbugs: Co-speciation in bedbug Wolbachia parallel the pattern in nematodes, published in Scientific Reports. |
| 27 June. Student evaluation results for the Ecology Lecture came in. Here. |
| 15 June. Applied Zoology at Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften: See Conni from 6 to 7, Veronika from 7 to 8.30, Biz 6 to 8 and Johannes from 8 to 11 pm. |
| 13 June. Klaus in public podium discussion with Dietmar Dath (author, FAZ editor), Lars Koch (Germanist) and Christian Schwarke (Theologian) on Science Fiction, Life and Politics at the Hygiene Museum, 7pm. Link |
| 12 June. Evolution and Ecology Potential Exam Questions online. here and here. |
| 7 to 13 June. Zoology field trip – Rhön again, of course! |
| 23 to 25 May.On retreat. Focussing on harvesting efforts and on strategy. Kayaking almost mandatory. |
| 18 May. TU Dresden’s press release on our results re three parent babies. Link. |
| 16 May. Well done the students (and Christin) who made it to the bird song walk in first drizzling, then pouring rain. All at 5:30 a.m. |
| 11 May. Online: A systematic review and meta-analysis reveals pervasive effects of germline mitochondrial replacement on components of health in Human Reproduction Update. Link. |
| 30 Apr. Brilliant – accepted after various rounds of revisions, delays and even conflict of interest issues – A systematic review and meta-analysis reveals pervasive effects of germline mitochondrial replacement on components of health in Human Reproduction Update, the leading journal on human reproduction. Congrats to Ralph (and Klaus) and collaborators T. Morrow and D. Dowling. |
| 24 Apr. Klaus is speaking at the Kinderuniversität: Yucky Bugs? 500 children expected. Link and link and link. |
| 27 Mar. Finally! Co-speciation in bedbug Wolbachia parallel the pattern in nematode hosts, carried out with Czech, Norvegian and Canadian collaborators, has been accepted by Scientific Reports. |
| 26 Mar. The Animal Behaviour Course starts. |
| 23 Mar. Our application for PhD student/ postdoc position is now closed – unless someone knows interested applicants… Link to announcement. |
| 7 Mar. See Klaus’ letter in the Laborjournal mocking on the denial of the reported decrease in flying insect biomass. link to twitter. |
| 1-4 Mar. We are taking part in the International PhD student meeting at beautiful Sv Jan pod skalou. Brief report available here. |
| 27 Feb. Veronika, Klaus and Rolf Jessberger are excited to host the Dresden Gameeting – Meiosis, Hormones, Metabolism, Applications. Very interesting programme. |
| 21 Feb. Programme of the PhD student meeting available. |
| 15 Feb. Listen to Veronika’s cool stuff in the national Radio Deutschlandfunk and MDR. |
14 Feb. Welcome to Sara and Cristiano who join us from Porto to do their Bachelor theses. |
| 14 Feb. New PhD/ postdoc position announced. The official announcement (in German) is here. The more informative version is here. Or on evoldir. |
| 13 Feb. Veronika features on the TU Dresden central website. Link and extensively in other media link. |
| 1 Feb. Goodbye to Steven who is leaving the group. |
| 31 Jan. Professor Volker Sommer, evolutionary anthroplogist from UCL, is visiting the lab. He will also give a public science talk on animal ‘thinking’ in the Hygiene Museum on Tuesday night, 30 Jan, link. |
| 18 Jan. Finally, the time was settled for the International PhD student meeting at a beautiful location. It’s the follow-up meeting of the one we organised a year ago. |
| 16 Jan. Klaus’ layman talk to local entomologists on ‘Columnnar cacti, bats caves, rattlesnakes – bug hunting in Texas and Mexico’. Link |
| 10 Jan. Congratulations to Ruijian who was awarded an extension of his fellowship. |
 9 Jan. Welcome to Praneetha who will write her Master thesis in our lab, on enzyme activity and mito-nuclear compatibility. |
| 8 Jan. Congratulations to Biz on the acceptance of his paper in Evolution. |
| 7 Jan. Very well done Renata! First PhD paper accepted, in Eur J Cell Biol. Link |
| 7 Jan. See Klaus’ public rebuttal of the accusation by three statistics professors that the sharp decline in biomass of flying insect is but scaremongering. It is not. |
| 3 Jan. New field trip announced, Rhön again, of course. See link here. |
2017
| 19 Dec. See Veronika’s new website. |
| 13 Dec. Unbelievable, another one! December now makes up for the whole year… Many congratulations to Susi who got a DFG Eigene Stelle (less than two years after her PhD!) within the DFG Forschergruppe Thermal Acclimation in Drosophila. |
| 12 Dec. Wow, what an end-of-year race! Our grant application The role of sperm phenotypic plasticity in speciation, together with colleagues from Bayreuth, Prague and Brno has been funded. |
| 12 Dec. Announcement for the 2018 Animal Behaviour course is out in the corridors. And here. |
| 11 Dec. Paper out. Link here. Neuropeptidomics of the bedbug Cimex lectularius in J Proteome Research, carried out with colleagues from Würzburg and Köln. |
| 8 Dec. Another Christmas present! Barbara’s and Ruijian’s first paper towards their PhD More pitfalls with sperm viability staining and a viability-based stress test to characterise sperm quality accepted in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Many congratulations to Barbara and Ruijian! Link to publication. |
| 7 Dec. A Christmas present! Regular wounding in a natural system: bacteria associated with reproductive organs of bedbugs and their quorum sensing abilities accepted in Frontiers in Immunology (Molecular Innate Immunity). This work was carried out with colleagues from Bayreuth (O.Otti) and Kiel (P.Deines, K. Hammerschmidt). Link to publication. |
| 7 Dec. So_hohoho_mething to celebrate. |
| 6 Dec. Congratulations to Veronika, who has a co-authored paper accepted showing that bull sperm can serve as robots to deliver drugs to cancer cells. The study will appear in ACS Nano. |
| 1 Dec. Small paper out on the population size estimate of a rare bushcricket – the product of a student field trip! Here it is. Well done Mina and Ingo! And a special thanks to Dr Tobias Gerlach from the Bavarian government. Anybody for an internship there? |
| 21 Nov. Klaus is Invited Departmental Speaker at the Department of Ecology and Genetics in Uppsala, one of the best Evolutionary Biology Departments in Europe. link. |
| 17 Nov. Accepted! Neuropeptidomics of the bedbug Cimex lectularius has been accepted for publication in J Proteome Research. This work was carried out in collaboration with colleagues from Würzburg and Köln. See here for a picture of the bedbug brain. |
| 6 Nov. Join Prof J-H Dirks for today’s Biology Seminar in E33, at 3pm. Jan-Henning will speak on insect biomimetics. |
| 3 Nov. Klaus is speaking at the DarwinDay in Kiel, 1200 school students listen to Evolution in Society. See here for the programme. Not to be confused with the Darwin Award! See the local press. |
| 1 Nov. A very warm Welcome to Veronika. Veronika is an independent postdoc who won one of the prestigious OpenTopic Postdoc Positions of the TU Dresden. Our group will host her stay and benefit from her research interests in sperm biology. |
| 1 Nov. Goodbye to Bernard who is leaving the group. |
| 25 Oct & 1 Nov. Klausureinsichten Ökologie, Evolution, room 264, 4 pm. More details. |
| 15 Oct. Welcome back, Luisa! We are looking forward to find out whether high ROS Drosophila lines also have high ROS producing sperm. |
| 1 Oct. Welcome to Lucas, who starts as a student helper. Lucas will start with sex identification of bed bug nymphs. |
| 4-8 Sept. Biz is representing our group at Biology of Spermatozoa Meeting. See his poster and some very cool data here. Or on Twitter here. |
| 3-6 Sept. Ralph is representing our group at Mitochondrial Genomics and Evolution – an SMBE Satellite Meeting. See his poster here. |
| 31 Aug. Goodbye and Farewell to Ensi who is pursuing her PhD at UC Davis. All the best Ensi, we will miss you! |
| 31 Aug. New paper out in Insect Mol Biol and Biochem – congratulations Bernard! Link. |
| 18 Aug. Klausurergebnisse Ökologie and Evolution available. Or see teaching website. |
| 15 Aug. Congratulations to Reda for the extension of her fellowship. |
| 8 Aug. Updated BSc and MSc topics are available. Others are possible, too. |
| 27 July. Student helper(s) wanted (SHK) from Sept/Oct 2017. See here for details. First deadline: 10 August. |
| 4 to 6 July. Meet our guest, Departmental Seminar speaker Dr Adam Dobson, UCL. He will speak about “Diet, Transcription and Ageing“. In Drosophila. at 5pm. Adam’s scholar site. more here. |
| 3 to 14 July. We host Dr A Ribou and Prof C Grunau from the University of Perpignan. |
| 23 June. New arrival. The new confocal microscope has arrived. Welcome! |
 20 June watch out for Conni’s talk on two-photon FLIM in the BioVision Seminar at 4pm. BBQ party afterwards. |
| 19 June A report about the PhD meeting in Bautzen, organised by our group appeared in the Newsletter of the German Zoological Society. See here. |
| 19 June Klaus’ teaching evaluation has arrived. Results are here. |
| 10 June New paper out in Insect Mol. Biol. Biochem. by Bernard & co-workers. link |
| 1 June Happiness can arise from sticky sperm. |
| 1 June Meet our seminar speaker: Veronika Magdanz from the IFW will speak about Bio-hybrid sperm-driven microswimmers as diagnostic tools for sperm migration, 12-13 in E31 in the Biology Buildg. Her website. |
| 1 June Welcome to Jeanette Kessler who joined our group from today. Jeanette works on Epigenetic regulation of ovarian development in Drosophila. |
| 1 June Highest honour. Klaus was invited to be speaking at the student-organised Teichfest on the Ecology and Evolution of Phantastic (Teich)beasts. 7 July 18.30. |
| 29 May And one more successful TAC meeting! Congratulations, Barbara! |
| 17 May Two more successful TAC meetings! Well done, Reda and Ruijian! |
| 14-16 May Conni at the Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Conference in Prague, presenting a poster on FLIM of insect sperm and insect reproductive organs. |
| 12 May We are on Twitter. Let’s see how it works. @tudaz2. |
| 12 May Klaus is Invited Speaker at the Annual Meeting of the Biologists in Reproductive Medicine in Berlin on Risks and Chances of Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy. |
| 10-12 May Retreat in Bautzen. Conni’s FLIM results and Science Public relations were the topics. Of course, not without Ralph’s pub quiz. |
| 6 MayKlaus is invited to speak at the Annual Meeting of the Entomofaunistic Society of Germany, in Gotha. |
| 11 Apr Congratulations to Lisa-Marie, our lab’s BeLL student, for winning the Saxony-wide competition jugend forscht. Fingers crossed for her participation in the German-wide competition. |
| 11 April Successful TAC meeting! Nicely done, Steven! |
| 6 Apr Studium Generale – Klaus will speak on Mitochondrial Diseases and Therapies – what’s going on with the three-parent babies? In German, 16:40 ASB |
| 3 Apr Congratulations to our youngest lab member ever: Lisa-Marie Pumpa from St Afra High School did her BeLL study on Bedbug surface attachment with us, and made it to the final, Saxony-wide round of ‘Jugend forscht‘. Covered by the Sächs.Z. |
| from 4 Apr See the new seminar series we are involved in, organised by Conni. Topics in Advanced Microscopy Techniques. See here for the programme. |
| 28 Mar. We will host the Biology Seminar Speaker, Markus Knaden, MPI Chemical Ecology Jena, who speaks on Desert ant navigation by visual and olfactory cues. Biology Bldg E33, 5pm. Meet the speaker afterwards. |
| 21 Mar. We host today’s Biology Seminar Speaker, Marko Brankatschk, BIOTEC Dresden. The Fat and the Fly – how dietary lipids change Drosophila behaviour. Biology Bldg E33, 5pm. Meet the speaker afterwards. |
| 20 to 31 Mar The new Animal Behaviour course will be run. See here for details. |
| See the programme for the inter- and binational PhD student meeting. To take place 16 to 18 Mar in Bautzen. We will be represented with two talks (Ensi, Reda) and three posters (Barbara, Biz, Ruijian). See here for more. |
| 10 Mar. A sawfly on common hepatica – not as rare as believed? ?????? |
| 25 Feb-2 Mar Bernard in Taiyuan/China on collaborative meeting with Prof Jianzhen Zhang. Cuticle ‘stuff’. |
 27 Feb – 12 Mar Barbara, Biz and Klaus in Perpignan working with Ance (the one with glasses) – Drosophila sperm ROS in reach? II. |
| 15/16 Feb Bernard and Renata are at a project meeting at the MPI in Golm. Cuticle ‘stuff’. |
| 6 – 10 Feb Christian inspects ROS machine in Perpignan – Drosophila sperm ROS in reach? I. |
 1 Feb Published! Our work, with colleagues from Saarbruecken, showing the suitability of multiphoton imaging to characterise aspects of the cuticle. link |
| 31 Jan Accepted! Bernard’s work on the regionalisation of the cuticle in bedbugs and whiteflies. Forthcoming in J exp Biol. |
| 21 Jan Neue Zürcher Zeitung refers to our work. |
| 20 Jan Klaus speaks in Görlitz, first at the Kinderakademie then, no less seriously, at the Senckenberg-Gesellschaft. |
| 19 Jan A reason to celebrate… |
 18 Jan Gone sledging in Alternberg. Called team building. Brilliant anyway. |
| 9 Jan Welcome to Dr Biz Turnell who joins us as an independent NSF Research Fellow to work on Sexual Selection and Sperm Metabolism in Drosophila. |
2016
 10 Dec Our G3 paper is front page. |
| 7 Dec tudaz Christmas party. Enjoyed the Semper Opera house, the cable car up Weißer Hirsch, the Loschwitz Christmas Market and the Clara restaurant. Cheers! |
| 1 Dec Klaus’ interview with Scientific American on mitochondrial replacement aka three-parent baby technology. Link |
| 24 Nov Accepted. Autofluorescence lifetime variation in the cuticle of the bedbug Cimex lectularius is to appear in the journal Arthropod Structure and Development. |
 24 Nov tudaz in the press. With bedbugs on the frontpage! And even some scientific background. Link |
| 4 Nov List of new possible student projects. |
| 24 Oct Accepted. Klaus’ summary Traumatic Insemination in the Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. |
| 10 Oct Bernard’s paper in print in Journal of Biological Chemistry: “Helicoidal organisation of chitin in the cuticle of the migratory locust requires the function of the chitin deacetylase II enzyme (LM CDA2).” |
| 7 Oct Bernard’s paper out in Nature Communications: “Insulin and TOR signal in parallel through FOXO and S6K to promote epithelial wound healing.” Link |
| 5 Oct “A linkage map and QTL analysis for pyrethroid resistance in the bed bug Cimex lectularius” is accepted in G3-Genes, Genomes, Genetics, in which Klaus was involved. Link |
| Bernard’s book is out Extracellular Composite Matrices in Arthropods is out. Wow! Many congratulations! |
| 25-30 Sept Bernard speaks at the International Congress of Entomology conference in Orlando, Florida. |
| 22/23 Sept Klaus Invited Speaker at a conference of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam on “Risks inherent to nuclear transfer“. Link |
| 20 Sept Raffael defends his MSc thesis on “CRISPR Cas9 mediated mutagenesis in male-specific transcripts”. |
| 15 to 17 Sept Our first retreat, held near Decin in the Czech Republic. |
| 6 Sept New Bsc/MSc project available on protamine function in Drosophila. Details. |
| 22 July Bernard’s paper is out in Scientific Reports. “LmCYP4G102: An oenocyte-specific cytochrome P450 gene required for cuticular waterproofing in the migratory locust, Locusta migratoria“. Link |
| 6 Sept Results of the Ecology exam are out. Here. |
| 10 August Welcome to Ensi who joins us for a one-year PhD stay from today. She will work on mito-nuclear interactions in Drosophila. |
 31 July A big thank you and best of luck to Antje who officially leaves us today. Follow this place for more on her work on the appearance of the bedbug in German-speaking fiction literature. |
| 29 July Ecology exam, ASB 120, 11:10 to 14:30. |
| 21 July New arrival to the group. The multi-photon microscope has been installed and is now up and running. First pictures look beautiful. |
| 12 July Klaus’s talk ‘Acoustic communication in the animal kimgdom‘ in the seminar series “Music, Mathematics, Cognition” starts at 5 pm, A.-Bebel-Str.20, Hörsaal E08 |
| 12 July Evolution exam, HSZ 101. |
 28 June Welcome to Wei Dong who joins us as a postdoc to work on Cuticle Genetics in Drosophila melanogaster. |
| 10 June Goodbye and Thank you to Lisa who was working with us for her lab practical. |
| 9 June. Congratulations to Steven for a successful defence of his Master thesis ‘Co-localisation of resilin and dityrosine in Drosophila melanogaster’. |
| 7 June Marko Brankatschk from the MPI CBG is visiting the lab. See his talk Temperature Systems Biology of Drosophila at 5 pm. And join us for a drink afterwards in the beer garden Torwirtschaft. |
| 24 May Christina Rathke from Marburg University is visiting. See her talk Chromatin Remodelling and Compaction of the Paternal Genome During Spermiogenesis at 5 pm. And join us for a drink afterwards. |
 12 May Now official: Welcome to Reda who joins us as a PhD student to work on The molecular biology of chitinases in Drosophila. |
| 12 May Welcome to Luisa who will be working as research assistant (Hiwi) on the heritability of the egg-laying pattern, and on blood meal stealing in bedbugs. |
| 12 May Public talk by Ralph (Studium generale) The Biology of Cannibalism. |
| 3 May Paper out. Inhibition of fatty acid desaturases in Drosophila melanogaster Congratulations, Bernard! Link |
| 2 May High-end foreign expert in our ranks! Professor Bernard Moussian was awarded funding from the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Affairs. Many congratulations, Bernard! |
| 25/26 Apr Professor Brad Anholt, Univ Victoria is visiting the lab. Join for his talk on Extreme sex ratio variation in a marine copepod (Tues 5 pm), and for beer afterwards. The copepod in question is one of the model organism for mito-nuclear interactions. |
 23 Apr Klaus will be reading from his book on bedbugs during the Lange Nacht der Dresdner Theater. You are welcome to join. link |
| 18 Apr Bernard was fed up with the whinging about the peer review and made it into EMBO-Reports. link to paper, pdf of his comment |
 11 Apr Honours. A newly discovered dragonfly species has been named after Klaus for his support of dragonfly research. Asiagomphus reinhardti Kosterin & Yokoi 2016 occurs in the mountainous border region of Cambodia and Laos. Link to the paper and the university press release. More important: Link to the International Dragonfly Fund, a grass-roots organisation that funds dragonfly research and protection, and during which activities the species was discovered. |
| 8 Apr Accepted! Bernard an co-workers got a paper accepted in Proc B on Regionalisation of the Cuticle in Drosophila. |
| 7 Apr Public Lecture. Bernard speaks about The Biology of the Insect Skin in the Studium Generale (in German). 16:40 HS28, ASB, Zellescher Weg 19. Next date: Ralph, 12 May The Biology of Cannibalism. |
| 4 Apr Lectures start: Evolution, as well as ‘Umwelt I‘ aka Ecology. In June, Heiko will read Population Genetics. |
| 1 Apr ‘Old’ arrival. Welcome to Barbara who today celebrates her 4-months jubilee in our group. This is not an April Fool’s Day joke, she simply never was introduced here before. Apologies and a late Welcome! Barbara will work on the evolution of sperm metabolism. And by stating that she has, as a kind of compensation, received the largest news item this year. |
| 30 Mar New arrival. Atomic Force Microscope is being installed. |
| 25 Mar Congratulations to Biz Turnell of winning a NSF fellowship to join us from January 2017 for two years to work on the significance of sperm metabolism in sexual selection. Outstanding Biz! |
| 21-23 Mar Off to new horizons (even beyond 2020, haha…) – postdoc retreat on top of the Brand mountain. |
| 8 Mar Accepted. Finally! Congratulations Ralph! Heritability, evolvability, phenotypic plasticity and temporal variation in sperm-competition success of Drosophila melanogaster will appear in J evol Biol. Link |
| 1 Mar Welcome to Christian who joins us as a technician for microscopy and network issues. |
| 27 Feb Accepted. Congratulations to Bernard. Inhibition of fatty acid desaturases in Drosophila melanogaster larvae blocks feeding and developmental progression will appear in Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology. |
24 Feb.  Bienvenido to Raffael who joins the lab as a Master student. Raffael will work on the role of protamines in Drosophila fertility. |
| 17 Feb. Areas announced for which Master projects are available. Link to projects here. You will be involved in developing the specific themes. |
| 2 Feb. Bedbug genome paper out. Finally. Link. Also featured on TU Dresden’s main page. Link. Lots of press coverage – see Press page |
| 2 Feb. Bernard’s et al. paper A feedback mechanism converts individual cell features into a supracellular ECM structure in Drosophila trachea is out in the journal e-life. Congratulations, Bernard! link. |
| 27 Jan. Welcome to Loreen Knöbel who joins the lab as a PhD student. She will be supervised by Heiko Stuckas, Senckenberg Museum. Her topic is “Reproductive isolation in the Baltic Mytilus hybrid zone“ |
| 11 Jan. Welcome to Susanne Voigt who joins us from today! Susanne will be working on population genetics and bioinformatic analysis |
2015
| 15 Dec. For your diary: Applied Zoology members will give lectures for the Studium general on the Biology of Insect Skin (7 April, Bernard), Biology of Cannibalism (12 May, Ralph) and Conflict and Cooperation of the sexes (16 June, Klaus). Link to the lecture series |
| 15 Dec. Bernard’s report about the Royal Entomological Society meeting of the Special Interest Group Arthropod Cuticle is out. See here for a pdf. |
| 7 Dec. Ralph & Klaus’s paper out in Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics An Ecology of Sperm. Sperm Diversification by Natural Selection |
| 30 Nov. Bernard‘s paper out in Biology Open. Link |
 24 Nov. Klaus’ Inauguration Lecture (in German): Evolutionary and medical significance of mito-nuclear interactions, ~17:30 ASB (note Thorsten Mascher‘s Inauguration Lecture at 17:00). All welcome! |
| 17 Nov. Welcome to Guo Ruijian who joins us as a PhD student to work on Ecology, Genetics and Molecular Biology of Sperm Storage in Drosophila melanogaster. |
| 10 Nov. Paper accepted, with Klaus as a coauthor – the annotated bedbug genome will shortly appear in Nature Communications |
| 10 Nov. Welcome to Steven who joined the lab as a Master student after successfully presenting the results from his Forschungspraktikum today. Steven will work on resilin distribution in fly and bug legs. |
| 2 Nov. Bernard‘s paper out Drosophila chitinous aECM and its cellular interactions during tracheal development. Link |
| 20 Oct. Klaus was awarded a grant from the Saechs. Aufbaubank SAB to procure a fluorescence microscope. Thank you SAB! |
| 1 Oct. Welcome to Antje who joins us to work on the cultural history of the bedbug |
| 20 Sept. Our paper on mitochondria replacement is referred to in a News feature in Nature. |
| 18 Sept. Klaus‘ opinion on science (mis)communication during discussion about mitochondrial replacement therapy appears in Lab Times. In case, the link doesn’t work, download the pdf here. |
| 14-19 Sept. Bernard is artist in residence at the festival for visual music in Stuttgart. He is involved in the musical representation of Drosophila mutations. link |
| 2 Sept. Paper out! Characterising sperm metabolism label-free using two-photon microscopy appeared in J Roy Soc Interface. |
| 8 and 9 Sept. We hosted the Royal Entomol Soc Meeting on Arthropod Cuticle, with a great programme and great speakers. Participants from 6 countries. |
 Klaus will read from his book at the Berlin Natural History Museum 22 Sept. See here for details. Or here. |
| 8 Aug. Paper out. The not quite so atypical career of an East German entomologist and evolutionary ecologist. Here. |
| 1 Aug. Welcome to Cornelia who joins us as a technician. |
| 20 July. Klaus on introduced animals on radio MDR 1 Radio Sachsen. Zoom in if you are an early riser – it is between 5 and 6 a.m. |
| 16 July. DFG grant on cuticle development awarded to Bernard. Many congratulations! |
| 9 July. Two topics on MSc projects: 1) Molecular biology of chitinases in insects. 2) Resilin anchorage in the skin. Details (in German). |
 6 July. Welcome to Renata, a PhD student with Bernard. |
| 3 July. Klaus presents at the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften in Dresden. 21:00 Biology Building, Zellescher Weg 20b, Room E33. |
| 15 June Applying evolutionary theory to medicine: Discussing mitochondrial replacement therapy in Geburtshilfe & Frauenheilkunde. Paper can be inspected here, but is subject to copyright. |
 13 June Klaus presents at the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften in Berlin, 21:00. |
| 12 June. Bernard is appointed Guest Professor at the Univ Shanxi. Congratulations Bernard! |
 11 June. Klaus gives a seminar on “Sexual conflict in the bedbug” at the Freie Univ Berlin |
| 8 June. Welcome to Christin who joins us as a technician. |
 5 June. Klaus accepted as a member of staff in the Dresden International PhD Programme DIPP. See his webpage at DIPP. |
| 1 June. Welcome to Conni and Bernard who join the group. |
| 28 May. A milestone paper in Developmental Cell – on the function of the triple-repeat protein Anaconda organising tricellular junctions in Drosophila melanogaster. In collaboration with the Uv (Göteborg, Sweden) and Luschnig (Münster, Germany) labs. Many congratulations, Bernard! |
| 13 May. Congratulations to Guo Ruijian who won a Chinese Government Scholarship. He will join us as a PhD student in October 2015 to work on the Ecology, Genetics and Molecular Biology of Sperm Storage in Drosophila melanogaster. |
| 7 May. Becky Rosengaus gives a seminar “Symbiont-mediated social immunity”. See her website for her research and come by and meet her on 6 and 7 May. |
 30 March. Dr Anne-Cecile Ribou and Prof. Dr Christoph Grunau from the University of Perpignan spend sabbatical time in our group. Christoph’s seminar Disentangling genetic and epigentic components of heritable phenotypic variation in the coevolution of hosts and parasites is on 21 April (Abstract), his lecture “Epigenetics and Evolution” also on 21. Ance’s talk will be Using next-generation fluorescence probes to detect free radicals in living cells: the case of the mitochondria. Come by and meet them. |
| 25 March. Our paper “Risks inherent to mitochondrial replacement” appears in EMBO Reports. |
| 11 March. Klaus gives a talk at the Behavioural Ecology Seminar Series, University of Bern on “Sperm ecology“. |
| 4 March. Klaus gives a talk at the Max-Planck Inst for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam Golm “What does sexual conflict have to do with properties of biological materials?“ |
 26 Feb. Klaus reads from his new book at the Berlin Volksbuehne BOOKS Pavillion (press release in German). |
| 23 Feb. Anja, our new secretary starts. Welcome Anja! |
 1 Dec 2014. Dr Ralph Dobler accepts the position in Dresden. Welcome, Ralph! Long time no seen. See Ralph’s website. |
 11 Feb. Our paper “Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict” is published in Royal Society Interface. |
| 26 Nov 2014. The Royal Entomological Society supports Klaus’ and Stuart Reynolds’ application for a Special Interest Group ‘Arthropod Cuticle’. |
 22 Nov 2014. Klaus’ popular science book “Literarische Wanzen” is published (Neofelis Verlag Berlin) |
| 20 Nov 2014. “Female transcriptomic response to male genetic and nongenetic ejaculate variation” appeared online in Behavioral Ecology (Press release in German). |
| 1 Nov 2014. Klaus starts the position in Dresden (Press release in German). |
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