General Interests

Since childhood interested in all aspects of nature, I studied physics to start out with the basics of inanimate nature. For my diploma thesis I switched to mathematical biology to study biological evolution with the help of mathematical models. The understanding, description and prediction of nature and its phenomena interest me and due to their complexity ecology and especially evolution are two absorbing fields. The study of evolution becomes even more tempting if one considers that evolution is the reason why we are here (amongst many other astonishing creatures).

I would say that my interests are not really condensed at this point and I am open to different fields of research. Important for me is the quantitative nature of my studies. Life is something quantitative and science should be even more so. That is why mathematics and statistics are important tools for me. The models I work on at the moment are on rather conceptual level. I think that both is important, to uncover fundamental mechanisms and to understand actually observed data. The ultimate goal, however, is to connect both to describe real world data with the help of fundamental mechanisms. Besides mathematics I use computer simulations to investigate my models.

Current project

Since February 2009 I am a PhD-student working in the project "Multidimensional adaptive dynamics and the evolution of phenotype determination" (link , in german), which is financed by the WWTF . A description of the project in the online newspaper of the University of Vienna can be found here (in german). Claus Rueffler is the head of this project. My supervising Professor is Joachim Hermisson.

You can find more information on the general project on Claus’ site and in the paragraph on my diploma thesis.

Diploma Thesis

My diploma thesis was a part of the project named above. I developed a function for individual based simulations of a population dynamical model. Different mechanisms of phenotype determination (canalised genotype-phenotype map, bet-hedging, phenotypic plasticity) where allowed to evolve. The complete thesis is available HERE. In the following you can find the abstract of my thesis:

In temporally or spatially varying environments species often evolve different phenotypes in response to this variety of niches. Such a phenotypic polymorphism can either be due to different genotypes present in the population or due to a mechanism that allows a single genotype to produce different phenotypes. Both possibilities were subject to many studies but rarely have they been combined in a single analysis. Here, an eco-evolutionary model for the evolution in time-varying environments is studied by means of individual based simulations. This model has been introduced by Rueffler et al. (in prep.) and initially been studied by using the adaptive dynamics approximation. In this model different mechanisms of phenotype determination are allowed to evolve simultaneously. The alternatives are a canalised genotype-phenotype map, phenotypic plasticity where an environmental cue is used to produce an adapted phenotype and bet-hedging (randomisation). The simulations presented here relax the assumptions of the adaptive dynamics approximation and show that the analytical results remain valid under more general conditions. Additionally, cases are treated in which the model is not analytically tractable. Contrary to preceding work we find that genetic polymorphisms can outcompete a bet-hedging strategy if a certain mutational correlation is introduced and mutational step sizes are limited. Comparing canalised genotypes and phenotypic plasticity we find that, depending on model parameters, different outcomes − ranging from polymorphisms of canalised phenotypes to evolutionary cycles − are possible. When canalised genotypes, phenotypic plasticity and bet-hedging are all allowed for simultaneously, we find that the strategy approached by evolution is a mixture of phenotypic plasticity and bet-hedging.

Aquaristics

In my spare time I keep, observe and breed rare ornamental fish. I managed to breed some species for the first time in captivity and published several reports in Aquaristics-journals. For more information visit my private homepage (coming soon).