A rare opportunity for a group & affiliates photo. Taken during the apero following my inaugural talk, the reason why I am dressed like a bible salesman.
Stefan
Rotiferella
Here’s a beautiful “studio” shoot of our laboratory’s cover girl, Rotiferella, taken by Stefan using a stereomicroscope. This is a mictic female of Brachionus calyciflorus carrying five male eggs.
1000+ new group members, the Brachionus rotifers
Our first rotifers, algae, lab equipment and chemicals have finally arrived, and Dr. Diego Fontaneto came over from Institute of Ecosystem Studies (Verbania) to teach us how to handle these little guys and keep them happy. First experiments will commence soon..
Stefan Sommer, our new rotifer meister
Many long-term studies on larger vertebrates provide us with only a single time series to study population dynamics. To test all the interesting hypotheses arising from these studies, we have to shrink those systems into tubes and replicate under different treatments. For this, with the invaluable help of Dr. Diego Fontaneto (Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Italy), we chose the rotifers as our experimental system. It didn’t take too long for us to realize that we needed expert help. And that help arrived as a swiss-army-knife of a guy: Stefan Sommers, our research associate, rotifer-meister, orchestrator of our microcosm lab!