Sinergia trip 2022 - Moritz Muschick -5.png

I am a senior postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern and Eawag (Group Seehausen), both in Switzerland, studying organismal diversification, especially in the context of cichlid fish adaptive radiation. I'm currently using a paleogenetic approach to investigate Lake Victoria's haplochromine cichlids, funded through an SNSF Sinergia grant.

 

In previous work, I explored patterns of ecological specialisation and genomic divergence of Timema stick insects together with Patrik Nosil at the University of Sheffield, UK, and speciation and ecomorphological evolution of cichlid fishes in the groups of Axel Meyer (University of Konstanz, Germany) and Walter Salzburger (University of Basel, Switzerland).

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NEWS & EVENTS

June 2021
ISBA9 conference The International Symposium of Biomolecular Archaeology is on again, and this time I'm participating. Great to see what fantastic findings can be created with paleoproteomics and ancient DNA from tiny amounts of diverse substrates. 
July 2022
Far4ViBE, SIAL8 and ICDP workshop on Lake Victoria drilling Busy times during field work and three events back-to-back in Tanzania. Was great to catch up with many colleagues and make new connections – and say hi to Lake Tanganyika's fabulous cichlids once again.
October 2022

New paper In Polar Biology, my co-authors and I report the mitochondrial genome sequence of the antarctic ice fish Channichthys rugosus. We pieced it together from extremely short DNA fragments from an almost 50 year old, formalin-fixed museum specimen. This was made possible through application of ancient DNA methods, such as single-stranded DNA library preparation.

September 2022
INTECOL 2022 At the INTECOL conference 2022 in Geneva, Nare Ngoepe, Ole Seehausen and I organised a session on "Palaeolimnology placed in an evolutionary context" with great contributions on a variety of systems.
April 2021
Practical in Aquatic Ecology & Evolution  During this year's two weeks long intensive practical we will investigate fish adaptive radiations using geometric morphometrics and phylogenetic comparative methods.
July 2020
New paper: Large-scale mutation in the evolution of a gene complex for cryptic coloration. Published in Science
June 2020
New paper: Adaptive zones shape the magnitude of premating reproductive isolation in Timema stick insects. Published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

April 2019
Practical in Aquatic Ecology & Evolution  During this year's four weeks long intensive practical we will investigate the fish community composition in Lake Constance through time using sediment cores.

March 2019
SNSF Sinergia grant is starting Last November, we received the great news that our application for an interdisciplinary Sinergia grant was approved by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the project starts already this month. Over the next four years, our large team of collaborators will investigate Lake Victoria's prehistory with a focus on how the diversification of haplochromine cichlids interacted with changes in the ecosystem. You can find more information on the SNSF's project database (link).
October 2018
Coring expedition to Lake Victoria Just returned from the shores of Lake Victoria, Tanzania, where a team from Tafiri, Uni Bern (IPS and IEE), and Eawag retrieved a large set of sediment cores covering the entire life time of the modern lake (i.e. ~15000 years). A great team working very hard and some luck with wind conditions made this possible. The expedition was funded by an University of Bern Strategy Grant.