High-latitude Biodiversity

Terrestrial polar biodiversity is threatened by climate change, which may lead to the formation of new communities, rapid diversification, or, eventually, taxa loss. Within the research area “High-latitude Biodiversity”, the changes in terrestrial polar biodiversity in response to climate and land-cover variability over the late Pleistocene to present‐day warming are investigated. Our work focuses on the diversity of terrestrial plants and aquatic flora and relevant faunal taxa at different taxonomic levels, focusing on the community scale of selected key groups such as higher plants and diatoms, and on ecosystem-level biodiversity changes. For tracking biodiversity changes we use environmental ancient DNA and microfossil analyses obtained from sediment, water and ice samples.

Team

Dr. Amedea Parfumo

Dr. Sisi Liu

Dr. Sichao Huang

Izabella Baisheva (PhD)

Ugur Cabuk (PhD)

Jeremy Courtin (PhD)

Viktor Dinkel (PhD)

Barbara von Hippel (PhD)

Weihan Jia (PhD)

Stefano Meucci (PhD)

Ying Liu (PhD)

Wei Shen (PhD)

Iris Eder (MSc)

Stella Buchwald (MSc)

Linda Siegert (MSc)

Theresa Wietelmann (MSc)