The annual meetings of the Water Science Alliance (WRHC) and the German Limnological Society (DGL) have concluded, hosted by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). Florian Leese helped organize the WRHC and led a workshop on eDNA.

Our group was represented with several contributions: Marie-Thérèse Werner presented the "DNA macht Schule" (DNA in Schools) project, Ann-Christin Lenz and Florian Leese presented data from the TrendDNA project, Lara Moreno Sanchez shared results from her master's thesis on biodiversity from 1 L of water, Jannis Budke reported on the development of reference materials for metabarcoding, and Philipp M. Rehsen presented automated image recognition as a complement to taxonomic and genetic data in multiple-stressor research. Iris Madge Pimentel gave two presentations.
Two awards went to our team: Iris Madge Pimentel received the DGL's 2026 Schwoerbel-Benndorf Early Career Award for a joint study conducted within DFG Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1439 RESIST (with Ralf Schäfer), and Lara Moreno Sanchez won the best poster award for the "DNA macht Schule" poster.

Tag 1: Entomologische Methoden im Feld: Insekten finden, sammeln, fotografieren

Tag 2: Führung durch die Sammlung des entomologschen Vereins Krefeld, Insekten bestimmen

Beide Termine finden ganztägig in Krefeld statt, gemeinsame Anreise ab Campus Essen ist möglich.

Weitere Infos und Anmeldung unter lisa.wolany@uni-due.de

At a sunny weekend in July, the “DNA macht Schule” team participated in the “Tag der lebendigen Lippe” in Datteln. For the first time, the EGLV invited researchers to the Lippe river (instead of the Emscher river) for assessing its biodiversity and offering participatory activities for interested citizens. We are happy about the many visitors that played pairs, tried out the field and lab work, and got first insights into the Lippe river biodiversity with our DNA macht Schule App. We are looking forward to new registration for the next school year.