Information for Students

Join the Lab: Research Opportunities for Students

Are you a motivated and curious student with a strong interest in sensory ecology and animal communication? Our lab offers a dynamic environment for hands-on research. We welcome inquiries from all interested candidates.

We offer several avenues for student involvement:

• Research Internships (B.Sc. & M.Sc.)
• Bachelor’s and Master’s Thesis Projects
• Projects built on your own idea — we are flexible on the model system, the question and the methods.

Do you already have a question you want to answer? We are glad to hear it. We will help you turn a rough idea into a workable project, and an idea does not need to be fully formed before you write to us.

We focus on novel scientific questions with the goal of publishing our findings in peer-reviewed journals. Students who make a significant contribution to a project are offered co-authorship on resulting publications.

A list of ongoing projects can be found here.

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Experimental Approaches

Our research integrates behavioral ecology with advanced analytical chemistry.

Projects in the lab provide training in a range of methods and may involve:

• Designing behavioral assays (e.g., olfactometers) to test the function of chemical signals.
• Identifying pheromones using metabolomics based on LC-MS/MS and GC-MS analyses.
• Investigating multimodal communication by exploring the interplay of chemical and physical signals.
• Testing the efficacy of botanicals as sustainable deterrents for urban arthropod pests.

Our primary study systems include a range of spiders (Latrodectus, Araneus, Pisaura, Zoropsis) and other understudied arthropods like the house centipede (Scutigera). While our work is mainly lab-based, projects often include local fieldwork.