Four green research institutes in Leiden are joining forces to integrate evolution and biodiversity research, at local and at the national level. Pivot in this collaboration is Frederic Lens.

Evolution & Biodiversity is one of the four research themes of the Institute of Biology Leiden.

The master’s specialisation Biodiversity and Sustainability at Leiden University provides students with a much better understanding of the biological processes which are essential for creating a sustainable society.

For a first time the atlas maps the soil biodiversity of the entire planet, and provide s comprehensive analysis of human-induced threats to soil organisms and soil functioning, facilitating development of new policies to protect soil and soil organisms.

Microbial Sciences' contribution to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme focuses on understanding how bacteria sense and respond to their environment, and how bacterial diversity and evolution is influenced by cooperative and antagonistic interactions taking place between microbes.

Plant Sciences' contribution to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme is to understand what are the key drivers of plant biodiversity during evolution with a focus on plant life history and resilience traits and develop tools to restore and maintain plant biodiversity.

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Evolution & Biodiversity research theme include evo-devo research, the evolution of cognitive and behavioural traits, and the evolutionary mechanisms of stress adaptation. This research involves both indoor and outdoor studies.

This thesis combines field and laboratory studies to address some of the most pressing questions in the field of microplastic research.

PhD Defence

How can we quantify the density of species within a community through environmental DNA concentrations?

Does Artifical Light at Night (ALAN) disrupt seasonal physiological and behavioral patterns in migrating freshwater fish?

Do sustainability values play a role in motivating people to act for biodiversity in successful projects and in successful leadership action? And how could these values be incorporated in current economic valuation methods?

Does a high quality prairie restoration in an urban/agricultural landscape provide invertebrates necessary for a sustainable ecosystem?

A management strategy has been developed for field margins to reduce pesticide drift to non-target areas and to promote biodiversity on arable land. To this end, 3 and 6 m wide strips along the edges of winter wheat, sugar beet and potato crops have been left unsprayed with herbicides and insecticides…

Science, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

Local residents, scientists and students are investigating riverbanks in Leiden for the 'Bank Plants' citizen science project. Which plant species are found where? And how can the municipality of Leiden improve its riverbank management to ensure optimal biodiversity?

Universiteit Leiden in cooperation with Naturalis, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and University Wageningen is foundig a center for biodiversity. They will receive 30 million euros from The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).

Students searched for a student project about internalization and the effects of nanomaterials in freshwater organisms. Open to BSc and MSc students and any timeframe.

An international team including Peter van Bodegom shows how trait variability can be incorporated in Essential Biodiversity Variables to allow monitoring how organisms respond to global change. They published their results in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

On December 16th 23 students of the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University took part of the first total species inventory to assess the effectiveness of an underwater landscape that was build in March 2003 to restore the biodiversity in an area where the environment was destroyed by…

Biodiversity in the Netherlands is having a tough time. Professor of Natural Capital Koos Biesmeijer combines research with practical advice: from the greening of industrial parks to solutions inspired by hi-tech nature. Inaugural lecture 9 March.

Inaugural address of Prof.dr.ir. Peter van Bodegom

Which traits did change due to the invasion process of plants and how do these traits contribute to the invasiveness of such species. What is the role of carbohydrate accumulation? What is the function of carbohydrate accumulation in plants? Is genetic variation depleted in invasive species under se…

Do offshore windfarms affect the local biodiversity of the pelagic fish community and are fish deterred or attracted by sounds?

What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves, Menno Schilthuizen reports from the front lines of evolutionary biology, on a quest to make sense of the origins, workings and evolution of our and other species’ reproductive selves.

Zijn sociale aspecten van anxiety-like gedrag bij zeer jonge zebravissen al aanwezig? Zijn deze afhankelijk van de coping style (persoonlijkheid) van het individu? Zijn deze gedragingen endocrien te moduleren, bv door oxytocine?

We study the link between the acoustic, behavioral and physiological health of birds and prominent pollution factors. We aim to explore causation through experimental studies on detrimental factors like traffic noise, particulate matter and chemical toxins. Our primary target is scientific progress…

Do natural soundscapes affect migratory decisions of fishes moving up and down rivers and is this process disturbed by vessel sounds?

It came as a shock to many people: one million plant and animal species are threatened to become extinct. But this number isn’t the most relevant aspect, argue Alexander van Oudenhoven, Koos Biesmeijer and three other experts in Dutch newspaper Trouw. ‘It is more important to realise that the fate of…

Students at Leiden University College (LUC) learn about biodiversity not only in the lecture hall, but also in the natural environment. University lecturer Thijs Bosker and student Sebastiaan Grosscurt talk about using camera traps in a teaching and research project.

How can species literacy in the Netherlands be explained and improved?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

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.

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

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:…