Our group, headed by Professor Florian Altermatt, addresses fundamental and applied questions in ecology and biodiversity sciences, with a focus on spatial ecology, aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem processes. With our work we want to understand how species occur in space and time, how they interact, and how processes such as species invasions, dispersal or global change affect natural communities.

We use both experimental and comparative approaches, integrate novel tools such as environmental DNA (eDNA), and parallel it with theoretical models. For our work, we use a variety of study systems suited to address broad-ranging questions in ecology. This particularly includes protists (microcosm-experiments) and freshwater invertebrates (amphipods). 

Our group is part of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at University of Zurich and the Department of Aquatic Ecology at Eawag.