( ongoing updating )
Marc Stift was a senior research associate in the Ecology Group and has contributed to many of our research projects as well as teaching programmes. He has taken on the position as research group leader at Frauenhofer Aachen starting April 1st.
Brian Steidinger was a guest Humboldt scholar from 2020 to 2023 working on mutualism between terrestial plants and mycorrhizal fungi. He has just received fellowship funding to work at University of Edinburgh.
Lara Plattner and Stephanie Gurres did their Master theses in our group in 2022 / 2023.
Trevor Fristoe was a senior research associate in the Ecology Group from 2018 to 2023 working on species distribution and has taken on the position of Full Professor at University of Puerto Rico, starting from 1st August.
Shuya Fan was a visiting PhD student from April 2022 to March 2023, working on understanding the impact of species’ evolutionary history on global plant naturalization. She has now returned to Shanghai and is looking forward to finishing the PhD study this year.
Louisa Neubauer did her Master thesis in our group in 2022
Rutger Wilschut was a Postdoc in the Ecology Group from January 2019 until summer 2022, working on plant-soil feedbacks as well as teaching in Compackt-Course "Plant Physiology" and Advanced-Course "Global Change Ecology and Plants".
Qiang Yang was a Postdoc in the Ecology Group from May 2018 until January 2022. He was working on the macroecology and macroevolution of global naturalized plant species.
Tom Lachaise did a PhD project on the diversity of root traits in German grasslands. His research project focused on belowground trait dimensionality and trait variation along environmental gradients, as well as the relationships between plant species abundance and frequency and above- and belowground traits. He defended in October 2021 and is now working in clinical research.
Courtney was a PhD student in the Ecology group from January 2018 to February 2021. Her project centered around the evolutionary ecology of plant mating system transitions. Specifically, she focused on reproductive isolation and life-history divergence in the early stages of plant mating system shifts from self-incompatibility to self-compatibility. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Ireland working on the reconciliation between climate action and biodiversity protection.
Anke Stein was a Post Doc in the Ecology Group from September 2015 to July 2021. She was studying the distribution of naturalized alien plant species worldwide.
Zhijie did his PhD projects in the Ecology Group from Oct. 2016 to Oct. 2020, he was then a joint postdoc of AG van Kleunen and AG Becks until March 2022. Currently he is a postdoc in Becks’ lab and will be giving lectures in the ecology course (WS 2022/2023). He is currently studying the interplay between competition and evolution using microorganisms.
Jonas Bleilevens did his Master thesis in our group in 2020/21.
Jianjun Zeng was in our group as a 1-yr visiting CSC scholar from 1 November 2019 to 31 October 2020.
Bicheng Dong was a Post Docs in the Ecology Group from December 2019 to January 2021 as visiting scholar from China.
Stephanie Höckendorff was a PhD student in the Ecology Group from 2017 to 2020, and later continued in the Research Training Group R3 of Uni Konstanz.
Sasha Kosanic was a postdoc researcher from 2016 to 2020 researching on the impact of climate change on ecosystem as well as on society.
Eva Maria Malecore did a PhD project on Darwin's naturalization hypothesis, phylogeny, enemy release and multi-trophic interactions. She focused on how the success of an invasive plant depends on its interactions at different trophic levels and on its phylogenetic relatedness to the native community. She completed her PhD in October 2019.
Yanjie Liu first did his PhD projects in the Ecology Group from September 2013 to July 2017, and then continued to a postdoc stay in the group until March 2019. Currently he is full professor, and leads a Bioinvasion Ecology group at Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Yan Li did her PhD projects in the Ecology Group from January 2014 to March 2019, focusing on the topic of the drivers and consequences of in- and outbreeding in plants. Currently she is a postdoc at Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, China. Now, her projects are related with exploring the mechanisms of plant invasion, such as the effect of kin recognition on plant invasion and the effect of O3 pollution on plant invasion.
Noelie Maurel was a Post Doc in the Ecology Group from May 2013 until August 2019. She was working on potential bias in the introduction history of alien ornamental plants, and their consequences on current naturalisation patterns.
Emily Haeuser did a PhD research project on experimental and modeling approaches to attempt to identify Europe’s next likely invaders under future climatic conditions from among a large pool of previously-introduced, frequently-planted ornamental alien species which may be better suited to future rather than current European climates. She completed her PhD in December 2017.
Samuel Carleial did a research project on the plant model species Arabidopsis lyrata and its reproductive system and completed his PhD in July 2017.
Elisabeth Rehn was Mark's personal assistant until February 2017. Now she has time enough for a somewhat peculiar hobby.
Gregor Müller started to do his PhD-research in March 2013 on "Testing the relative roles of competition and plant soil feedback in explaining commonness and rarity of alien and native plant species".
Marti March Salas has visited our group from September to December 2016.
Katharina Mayer was engaged in a project on climate change around the Lake of Constance for which she did research from 2014 to 2016.
Arne Erpenbach PhD worked in our group from May to October 2016. As a specialist in R and Access he worked with the GloNAF database.
Wayne Dawson PhD was in the group from March 2011 to December 2015. His topic is plant-soil interaction. He is in Durham now.
Yanhao Feng started as a PhD-student in Konstanz in 2011 funded by the China Scholarship Council. His PhD-thesis "Regional- and Local-scale Drivers of Establishment and Invasion Success of Alien Plants" was published in 2015.
Lei Ning was in Konstanz from 2013 to 2015 as a joint PhD-student (Prof. Dr. Fei-Hai Yu, Beijing Forestry University. His topic is "The role of allelopathic effects in plant invasions".
Ayub Oduor was examining the roles of below-ground insect herbivores in invasion success of plants. His focus was on two topics 1. damage by below-ground insect herbivores will cause invasive populations to express a higher level of tolerance than native populations of the same species. 2. Damage by below-ground insect herbivores will cause invasive populations to have higher competitive abilities than native populations of the same species. He was funded by a Georg-Forster-Scholarship.
Janosch Sedlacek studied the heritability of plant traits, natural selection in different habitats, and the potential evolutionary responses of Salix herbacea to climate change. His research was part of the SNF research project "Growth limitations, phenotypic plasticity and micro-evolution in a long-lived alpine shrub".
Lidewij Keser spent some years (2011-2014) in our group as a guest student from Bern. She investigated various aspects of clonality and its contribution to plant species invasiveness.
Lena Horstmeyer did her MSci-Thesis "Survival and growth of common and rare alien and native plants: The role of soil fungi and disturbance" in our group in 2014.
Marcel Dorken has spent several months in our group in 2014 funded by the Humboldt-Foundation.
Margherita Gioria has been a member of our group for several months and promised to keep in close contact.
Jens Joschinski did his MSci-Thesis "Do selfers differ from outcrossers in growth and resistance to caterpillars" in our group.
Demissew Tsigemelak (MSci, University of Nairobi, Kenia) was supported by DAAD to spend the summer 2012 in order to learn something about ecology in Konstanz.
Sina Glöckner did her MSci-Thesis on "Breaking open the black box of soil: Identifying shifts in soil microbial communities in plant-soil feedback experiments."
Stefanie Lemmermeyer did her MSci-Thesis on "The role of microbial soil communities in plant-soil feedback of fast and slow growing plant species."