Plenary speakers

Steffen Pauls is a stream ecologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute, whose research focuses on the diversification, evolution and ecology of aquatic insects. He completed his PhD at the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2004. Following 5 years of postdoctoral fellowships in the USA and Germany, he began to establish a working group on aquatic evolutionary ecology at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in 2010. Since 2017, he has been head of Department at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt and was awarded a joint Professorship for General Entomology at the Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen in 2019.

Steffen applies classic stream ecology methods and molecular tools to understand how populations differentiate, how distinct species evolve and how environmental conditions drive these processes. A central theme of this research is exploring the caddisfly diversity in mountain systems and tropical regions and elucidate the genomic basis of caddisflies’ ecological success and evolutionary diversification. In his talk he will present examples of systematic and biogeographic research on European caddisflies and aquatic insects.

Steffen will give a talk entitled “Biogeography and Diversification of European Caddisflies and Montane Aquatic Insects”.

Maja Zagmajster is a research scientist at the University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Department of Biology, where she works in the SubBioLab research group (https://www.subbio.net/). Her interest in bats during her studies soon led her into caves, where she became fascinated by the remarkable diversity of obligate subterranean species. She completed her PhD on the biodiversity of cave beetles in the Dinaric Karst and further expanded her expertise through research visits to American University and University of Florida. These opportunities were supported by the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science international fellowship.

Her research focuses on understanding the patterns and processes that shape the biodiversity and distribution of subterranean taxa from local to continental scales. She applies GIS tools and spatial statistical modelling to visualise and analyse subterranean biodiversity patterns.

Maja founded and manages the Subterranean Biodiversity Database (SubBioDB), the central database of SubBioLab. This database contains spatially explicit records of species distributions, as well as individual-level data such as DNA sequences. It has become the most comprehensive database on subterranean species distribution in the northwestern Balkans and, for certain taxa such as Niphargidae, across Europe.

She currently leads the Biodiversa+ project Sub-BioMon (Developing and testing approaches to monitor subterranean biodiversity in karst), which aims to develop innovative methods for monitoring subterranean fauna in European karst regions (https://www.sub-biomon.net/). In addition to classical sampling approaches, the project includes the development of DNA libraries and the application of environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques in groundwater. Maja also coordinates SubBioLab’s participation in the Biodiversa+ DarCo project (The vertical dimension of conservation: a cost-effective plan to incorporate subterranean ecosystems into post-2020 biodiversity and climate change agendas) (https://www.biodiversa.eu/2023/04/19/darco/). She previously coordinated SubBioLab’s role in the national LIFE NarcIS project, which established Slovenia’s national information system for nature (https://narcis.gov.si/), to which SubBioDB contributes. She is also leading the testing of monitoring methods for caves as habitat types within the national project IP LIFE Natura.si (https://natura2000.gov.si/natura-2000/life-ip-natura-si/).

Her research is closely linked with conservation efforts, both through scientific work and active advocacy for the protection of subterranean biodiversity, particularly in areas threatened by large infrastructure projects. She is a member of the network Scientists for Balkan Rivers (https://www.balkanrivers.net/en/scientists) and has participated in two Science Weeks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, contributing to both research and public awareness in the region.

In addition, she led a project funded by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund aimed at improving knowledge and conservation of subterranean fauna in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in the southeastern Dinarides (https://db.subbiocode.net/). She is currently leading efforts to open SubBioDB to broader use as part of another conservation-oriented CEPF-funded project.

Maja will give a talk entitled “Groundwater biodiversity in Europe: exploring patterns and processes”.

Jonas Jourdan is a Research Group Leader at Goethe University Frankfurt (https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/aee). He is a freshwater evolutionary-ecologist by training and his research is driven by the urgent need to understand how global change reshapes freshwater ecosystems and threatens global biodiversity.

Jonas investigates how species respond to anthropogenic stressors across multiple biological scales—from individual phenotypic plasticity and development to broad-scale community shifts and ecosystem functionality. By identifying why some species thrive while others vanish, his work sheds light on the emergence of novel species interactions in changing environments. Bridging the gap between theory  and practice, he is a member of the RobustNature research network (https://www.robustnature.de/en/) and works with the Competence Center  Water Hesse (https://www.kompetenzzentrum-wasser-hessen.de/) to translate ecological insights into effective river conservation and management strategies.

Jonas will give a talk entitled “Stress along a river gradient: How species ecology and interactions shape persistence in human-dominated landscapes”.

Stefano Larsen is a permanent research scientist within the Unit of Computational Biology at the Edmund Mach Foundation’s Research and Innovation Centre in Italy.

After spending a few years in rainy Wales for his PhD, he moved to Germany for a couple of post-docs. He moved back to Italy in 2017 with a Marie-Curie Fellowship at the University of Trento.

As a quantitative community ecologist, Stefano’s research focused on the ecology and biodiversity of river and riparian ecosystems, using macroinvertebrates and fish as favorite model organisms. His work bridges applied science with fundamental ecological theory, linked to the temporal and spatial dimension of biodiversity changes.

His work showed how simple measures of species richness can overlook complex biodiversity trends and has illustrated how long-term changes in community composition track climatic patterns at multiple temporal scales.

Furthermore, he utilizes spatially-explicit models to examine how the unique dendritic geometry and flow directionality of river networks impose fundamental spatial patterns in the dynamics of river metacommunities.

His ongoing effort focuses on the lateral dimensions of river systems and the critical role of emergent aquatic insects as underappreciated vectors of nutrient movement at the global scale.

Stefano will give a talk entitled “River macroinvertebrates as sentinel of change and overlooked vectors of global biogeochemical fluxes”.