How did toxin genes evolve from harmless physiological genes?

Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

Does Artifical Light at Night (ALAN) disrupt seasonal physiological and behavioral patterns in migrating freshwater fish?

Which traits did change due to the invasion process of plants and how do these traits contribute to the invasiveness of such species. What is the role of carbohydrate accumulation? What is the function of carbohydrate accumulation in plants? Is genetic variation depleted in invasive species under se…

Zijn sociale aspecten van anxiety-like gedrag bij zeer jonge zebravissen al aanwezig? Zijn deze afhankelijk van de coping style (persoonlijkheid) van het individu? Zijn deze gedragingen endocrien te moduleren, bv door oxytocine?

We study the link between the acoustic, behavioral and physiological health of birds and prominent pollution factors. We aim to explore causation through experimental studies on detrimental factors like traffic noise, particulate matter and chemical toxins. Our primary target is scientific progress…

How do common marmosets combine their calls into sequences and how are their vocalisations influenced by reproductive state?

Do offshore windfarms affect the local biodiversity of the pelagic fish community and are fish deterred or attracted by sounds?

Do natural soundscapes affect migratory decisions of fishes moving up and down rivers and is this process disturbed by vessel sounds?

Why do plants produces always produced so many slightly differing metabolites within a particular chemical class?

Do humans and zebra finches share cognitive mechanisms that are important for speech perception?

A theoretical project on the insights gained by human (including infant), nonhuman animal and computational studies on artificial grammar learning; identifying the critical questions for future research by developing novel experimental and computational approaches to address these issues.

How has early development in R. ocellatus been modified as a result of its parasitic embryonic lifestyle?

How does FoxP1 affect auditory perception on a behavioural and genomic level?

Are there acoustic cues for settlement stage larvae in deep-sea soundscapes around hydrothermal vents?

A central and much debated topic in the study of language acquisition concerns the nature of the learning mechanisms that are required. Are the computational and learning mechanisms that guide learning about language structure special and specific to language or humans?

How is vegetative development regulated in plants and how does this affect a plant’s life history strategy?

Four green research institutes in Leiden are joining forces to integrate evolution and biodiversity research, at local and at the national level. Pivot in this collaboration is Frederic Lens.

Lecture

Birds sing to be heard, but how do they cope with increasing noise levels? Which species persist in cities and why? And do they thrive or suffer in the urban soundscape?

A global biological study has provided the most direct evidence to date that humans, and specifically cities, are the drivers of evolutionary change on Earth. Leiden University, Naturalis and the Municipality of Leiden worked on and helped fund the study.

Newts of which half of the offspring die before birth. Evolutionary biologist Ben Wielstra is investigating how this can exist in nature. In his research he collaborates with Naturalis Biodiversity Center.

Ben Wielstra strives to unravel the evolution of balanced lethal systems. On 1 February he started his own lab at the Institute of Biology Leiden. Wielstra is one of five researchers at Leiden University who has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2018 by the European Research Council. ERC Starting…

Do understudied animals contain hidden species?

What are the phylogenetic relationships among the members of speciation bursts?

How do nonmotile microbes leverage communal motility?

Which metabolites of sponge are influenced by individual environmental or biological factors?

1. What is the exact role of PIN proteins in PAT? 2. How is PIN polarity established, and how is it modulated by AGC kinase-mediated phosphorylation? 3. What is the role of the AGC kinase, as modulators of PAT, in translating environmental signals, such as gravity, light or mechanical stress, to plant…

How do balanced lethal systems originate and persist in nature?

Why is the swimming efficiency of the European eel higher than predicted?

Does a moving hybrid zone leave a genomic footprint?

Ben Wielstra studies hybrid zones, regions in which distinct populations of organisms meet, mate and produce genetically admixed offspring. In the journal Current Biology, he introduces hybrid zones in an accessible way.

How does invasive hybridization affect threatened native species?

Ben Wielstra studies balanced lethal systems, in which half of the offspring die before birth. In the journal Current Biology, he explains in an accessible way how such a disadvantage can originate in nature.

What is the function of the insect serosa?

Can birds - like people- ‘see’ voices and learn how to sing by listening and watching?

Where did species survive the cold cycles of the current Ice Age?

Ben Wielstra and his team have received a ENW-M-1 grant. This grant of 354.000 euros is awarded by NWO, and will enable the researchers of the Institute of Biology Leiden and Naturalis to continue their evolutionary newt research.

I think we should go this way. This way! THIS! WAY!! Making yourself heard in a city can be difficult. That is not only the case for humans, but birds seem to be hindered by urban noise as well. Researcher Hans Slabbekoorn of Leiden University already showed that great tits in Leiden communicate differently…

Man-made sounds in and around the oceans stress marine life and have an impact on marine species and ecosystems by changing the underwater acoustic climate. Hans Slabbekoorn from the Institute of Biology Leiden pleads for technical solutions to mitigate problems of noise pollution. Science review paper…

If male budgerigars can successfully open a puzzle box with food, they become more attractive to females. Biologist Carel ten Cate and Chinese colleagues publish experimental evidence for this in a paper in Science on 11 January .

Like ants, termites and bees, some bacteria work together as a multicellular group. There is a strict division of labour in such colonies, to make the group more resilient to the outside world. Now researchers have found that some parts of the bacterial colony can take ‘for the greater good’ to a whole…

For nine years he worked on the three-volume standard work Plant Galls of Europe. It yielded 2300 pages about 10,000 species of European galls, abnormal outgrowths in plants caused by parasites. Hans Roskam from the Institute of Biology Leiden: ‘The abundance of galls says something about the natural…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) awarded behavioural biologist Hans Slabbekoorn (Institute of Biology Leiden) a grant of 750,000 euros to study fish and sounds around wind farms in the North Sea.

Does a snake die when it bites its lip? Why will a mongoose survive a scorpion’s sting, but we humans perish? These questions occupied the minds of toxin-enthusiasts and Master’s students Biology Jory van Thiel and Roel Wouters. They collected information from many sources and published their findings…

An international team with researchers from Leiden revealed how a bacterium repurposed an internal system to control its movements. Movement control is very important in host invasion, which can lead to disease. Publication on 27 April in Nature Communications.

‘I did not expect to receive the grant, but it will make an amazing research possible,’ Michelle Spierings says. The researcher of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) got awarded a Veni-grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Within the same species of butterfly many different wing patterns can occur. How is this possible? According to researchers Ben Wielstra and Emma Berdan, of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), the answer lies within supergenes. A supergene is a part of a chromosome that contains many strongly linked…

We will study how inoculation of former arable land with soil (including the microbiome, soil fauna and seeds/rhizomes of ground flora) from old forests along with planting targeted tree species mixtures will improve productivity and more rapidly restore forest-adapted communities and ulttimately result…

What are key regulators of plant ageing that can reverse ageing in plants (rejuvenation), and how can we use this knowledge to improve crop plants?