Setting Sails - A Clever Man Once Said That A Ship Is Always Safe In The Harbor, But This Is Not What

birthday card for ant-loving Simon 

Benthalbella macropinna original illustration in “Fishes of the southern ocean” 

trying to become friends with pastels - long way to go.

HEY JUDE! Ceratias tentaculatus 

original illustration in “Fishes of the Southern Ocean”

geoexcursion to Iceland; some very, very precious moments 

Hippos vs. Cows  This semester at uni I got to work on a topic completely new to me and so exciting - hippos! Who would have thought that hippos are actually quite the ecosystem engineers? The amount of organic matter these herbivores transport to rives and lakes is quite impressive, and the fact that their population is in danger is really not good news for the aquatic food chain and everybody who depends on it. The simultaneous explosion of cattle herds in Africa is another factor that complicates the matter - considering only the cows’ methane emissions really misses a large part of the picture! I think its so fascinating to see how the theoretical science you study as a student finally gets applied and produces meaningful data in the field - in this case people used C and N isotopic data to trace hippo/cow input into and along the food chain. 

Apis Mallifera - La vie est trop courte pour qu´on soit pressé 

Did you know that selenium deficiency is a thing? 

Up to a billion people around the globe are deficient, not getting enough of this trace element from their diet. This is why we are interested in understanding what controls selenium levels in soils. The atmosphere supplies Se to the soil environment - but where does this initially come from? I loved illustrating this study by Süss et al., (2019), investigating trace element sources using rainwater analyses. The data show that the terrestrial biosphere apparently has much more of an impact than we traditionally thought - at least during the summer. 

source: Elke Suess, Franziska Aemisegger, Jeroen E. Sonke, Michael Sprenger, Heini Wernli and Lenny H. E. Winkel (2019): Marine versus continental sources of iodine and selenium in rainfall at two European high-altitude locations. Environmental Science & Technology. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.8b05533

lost direction.