What’s up?
Regular updates from fieldwork, the lab and our Melastome Seminar Series -Virtual!
Successful PAIn trip to ECTE/GTÖ in Passau
The PAIn lab had a great time at the ECTE/GTÖ conference in February 2026 in Passau, with four talks and a poster presenting the varied work we are doing! For Juliane and Viki, it was their first international scientific...
Natural history fieldwork in the fall
Fall 2025 marked a busy time in the PAIn lab with fieldwork in Ecuador, Madagascar and South Africa! Agnes had the luxury of travelling to all three countries - in late August, César, Juliane and Agnes left to travel to Quito,...
PAIn lab hike
We have had a busy and successful spring with multiple people being on fieldtrips (e.g., César pulling off three months of buzz-pollination fieldwork in Brazil, Andrea, Imran and Isa finishing three months of data collection in...
The environmental context of traits and interactions
In two recent publications (Dellinger et al. 2025: Does the abiotic environment influence the distribution of flower and fruit colors? https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.70044; Kopper et al. 2025: Mountain colonization precedes shifts...
MountBuzz fieldwork in Madagascar and Borneo started
In the past month, Agnes had the great opportunity to travel to two of the world's most outstanding islands: Madagascar and Borneo. Madagascar is the world's oldest island, fourth largest in size, and a global biodiversity...
ERC Project MountBuzz kicked off!
The start of 2025 also signified the start of my big ERC Starting grant MountBuzz: relating context-dependent plant-pollinator interactions to macroevolution. Our aim in this project is to study the evolution of reproductive...
Successful fieldtrip in Colombia to study pollination, fruit dispersal and mites in Pyxidantheae
We, that's Viki Wieser and Johan Urrea, have just finished two months of intense field work in Colombia, exploring the tribe Pyxidantheae and the ecology of these plants. We’ve travelled to the departments Boyacá, Antioquía,...
Bringing the tropics to Vienna
by Benjamin Lazarus (PhD student) Over the past year, we have been gathering a bourgeoning collection of Melastome species housed in the Botanical Garden of Vienna … and we have been putting these new specimens to good use! Our...
Motherhood and amazing colleagues!
The past months have been a little different for my lab with me being on maternity leave and dividing my time between childcare and work during nap times. First, I have to say - while it is challenging sometimes, it is also...
Fieldwork in Ecuador and Brazil
Hello world! It’s Ben and Ash from South America… Agnes explained the thrust of our project best in her recent post “Rhexia fieldwork II: buzz-flower biomechanics” so make sure to check that out! But if two tabs is too many for...