About
I studied ecology of animals and began my working career in Germany investigating pest rodents to develop a model to simulate their population growth for an efficient application of control methods. My research focused on ways to manipulate the reproduction of these rodents by using species-specific pheromones. During post-doctoral fellowships in England and Belgium I was able to pursue research on chemical communication of vertebrates in combination with aspects of the spread of rodent borne zoonoses. In 1998 I immigrated to Australia and settled in the tropical lowland rainforest of the Daintree Coast in NE Queensland. Here I assisted in the developing of restoration projects in the tourist industry, managed a Nature Reserve with threatened Fan Palm-dominated rainforest owned by Bush Heritage Australia, and did research on the chemical communication of feral pigs. From 2006 to 2009 I taught German students on Australia’s ecosystems, geology, bio-geography and nature conservation strategies as Associate Lecturer at different German universities while also organizing and conducting field excursions across Australia. In 2008 I started a position as a lecturer for rainforest ecology and fauna at the Centre for Rainforest Studies at The School for Field Studies. This gave me the opportunity to do more research on Australian mammals. Living and working in the Wet Tropics of North Queensland as a zoologist is like being in paradise since many endemic and unique vertebrates live in this part of the world. My general interests in vertebrates got quickly captured by tree-kangaroos and Yellow-bellied gliders, both species which are hard to study and suffering from habitat loss and fragmentation. Their conservation is problematic because we don’t know much about their habitat requirements and existing numbers. My aim is to gain more knowledge about these species to make their conservation more effective.
Joined
February 2016
