Dutch children’s picture books are full of animals, but mainly mammals are portrayed. Especially pets and exotic animals are popular. A large part of the Dutch fauna is less visible, but biologist Michiel Hooykaas of Leiden University sees plenty of opportunities for a more biodiverse book world.

Promotors: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon, Prof.dr.ir. H.H. de Iongh

How do common marmosets combine their calls into sequences and how are their vocalisations influenced by reproductive state?

Are there acoustic cues for settlement stage larvae in deep-sea soundscapes around hydrothermal vents?

What we buy and consume in Europe often has an impact on biodiversity somewhere else in the world. With a Horizon Europe Funding of 600.000 euros, assistant professor Laura Scherer and her team will develop models to look at the impact of global trade in non-food biomass. ‘After developing the models,…

The research question is that unconscious perseverative cognition (UPC) is responsible for a considerable part of cardiovascular (CV) activity that occurs even in the absence of threats and other stressors that one may encounter in one’s daily life.

Does roadside management in the mid-west USA increase invertebrate diversity similar to practices in Europe?

On 5 September 2016 Space Awareness launched their first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on teaching with space and astronomy in the classroom.

Leiden University is aware of its role in society and wants to create a green, healthy and inclusive campus and have a positive impact on the field of climate and circularity. Our Sustainability Vision 2030 is the starting point for a new implementation programme with goals and activities for the period…

Gilles van Wezel of the Institute of Biology Leiden will lead a European consortium to search for new medicines and disease-suppressive microbes while preserving biodiversity. The consortium will explore the largely unknown potential of marine microorganisms.

Do humans and zebra finches share cognitive mechanisms that are important for speech perception?

Promotor: J.A. van Veen, Co-promotor: E.E. Kuramae

How does FoxP1 affect auditory perception on a behavioural and genomic level?

The main research question of this PhD project focus on how educational policies and practices can contribute to the promotion and understanding of archaeological indigenous heritage among teachers and students in the Caribbean?

CML researchers Nadia Soudzilovskaia, Rene Kleijn, Stefano Cucurachi, and Kevin Groen are teaching about the links between city sustainability and biodiversity, within the “Material city” course of the Bachelor Urban Studies curriculum. An online pre-view of an excursion on city biodiversity given by…

CML researchers has contributed to development of the first-ever Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas , which has been published recently by the European Joint Research Centre (EU JRC) and the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (GSBI).

Fifty thousand euros in expert knowledge and the title Young eScientist 2019: the National eScience Symposium on 21 November was very successful for computer scientist Lise Stork. She will use the knowledge to develop an application to make historical biodiversity data directly available to research…

A theoretical project on the insights gained by human (including infant), nonhuman animal and computational studies on artificial grammar learning; identifying the critical questions for future research by developing novel experimental and computational approaches to address these issues.

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

Research at the department of Environmental Biology

How did toxin genes evolve from harmless physiological genes?

How is vegetative development regulated in plants and how does this affect a plant’s life history strategy?

Do understudied animals contain hidden species?

What are the phylogenetic relationships among the members of speciation bursts?

In our lives we often have little attention or appreciation for plants, let alone the ones we commonly call weeds. This inattention for plants has been described as plant blindness. The Stoepplantjes project aspires to decrease plant blindness by changing the image of weeds and using citizen science.…

Educational programme Universe Awareness (UNAWE) is one of HundrED's 100 Global Inspiring Innovations in Education. This was announced on 4 October 2017 at the HundrED Innovation Summit.

How do you offer high-quality and interesting education with simple means? Universe Awareness of Leiden University spoke about this during the annual science festival in Botswana. With among others a laser experiment compiled of household materials, they showed the possibilities to interest young people…

What invertebrates are available to feed nestlings in an agricultural landscape of varied complexity?

What invertebrates live in the fields and edges? Do the populations change with landscape complexity?

We will study how inoculation of former arable land with soil (including the microbiome, soil fauna and seeds/rhizomes of ground flora) from old forests along with planting targeted tree species mixtures will improve productivity and more rapidly restore forest-adapted communities and ulttimately result…

The main purpose of DNAmarkerpoint is to better understand the ecology, evolution and biodiversity through the study of ancient- and modern DNA.

With the support of the Foundation for Refugee Students UAF, Russia expert Oshank Hashemi, a cum laude graduate of Leiden University, has won the Peter Baehr Prize 2016.

Universe Awareness is one of fifteen projects chosen by WISE for providing compelling and innovative solutions to today’s most pressing challenges in education.

Promotor: E. Gittenberger, Co-promotores: B.W. Hoeksema; L.P. van Ofwegen

How do nonmotile microbes leverage communal motility?

Biodiversity enables ecosystems to thrive through the synergy of functional differences among organisms. While human well-being strongly depends on biodiversity-driven ecosystem services, human actions are also at the root of current unprecedented biodiversity declines.