In the past, we have discovered and described several phagotrophic protists that interact with other eukaryotes in a variety of ways as parasites, predators and necrophages (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protis.2013.07.003; https://doi.org/10.1111/jeu.13065; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protis.2021.125854). The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of the behaviours of such life forms and their mechanistic basis. Specifically, we are interested, for example, in questions of selective food choice, prey perception, defence strategies of prey organisms and chemotaxis. The development of technical instruments and bioinformatic pipelines to quantify the behaviour of protists (in particular movements and reproduction) is of central importance.

The tasks in this project include:

– Development of microscopy setups for quantitative microscopy and behavioural analysis
– Development of experimental chambers for cell tracking experiments
– Establishment of a workflow for the quantitative analysis of cell tracking data (possibly AI-based)
– Conducting experiments on prey preference, selective predation, defence reactions of prey organisms and reactions to chemical and physical factors
– Experiments to obtain samples for chemical analyses, e.g. attractants, secondary metabolites (in collaboration)
– Detailed preparation of manuscripts
– Presentation of scientific results at conferences
– Support in the teaching activities of the department and supervision of student work