What’s up?
Regular updates from fieldwork, the lab and our Melastome Seminar Series -Virtual!

The role of geographical, phenological and ethological isolation in maintaining species boundaries in Rhexia
Closely related plant species frequently occur in sympatry and overlap in ecological characters. This overlap may lead to resource competition (i.e. for pollinators) and result in character displacement (i.e. divergence in...

Systematics, Evolution and Ecology of Melastomataceae
Today is a big day in the world of Melastomataceae! 😀 Finally, after about two years of work, Melastomatologists across the world have put together 34 chapters in a book soon to be published by Springer! Special thanks to the...

The predictive power of pollination syndromes
This has been such a fun project! Thanks to José Valverde, whom I had the pleasure to co-advise during his licenciate thesis at Universidad de Costa Rica, we now know the pollinators of Meriania macrophylla! This species is...

CU Boulder – a new (scientific) adventure!
In the frame of my new 3-year postdoc project "Modelling abiotic and biotic drivers of a plant radiation", I will spend one year at the University of Colorado Boulder working in tight collaboration with Stacey Smith! My first...

Another student joining the lab! Welcome José Miguel Valverde-Espinoza!
José did his licenciatura degree at the University of Costa Rica, working on the pollination biology of Meriania macrophylla. There, José confirmed yet another shift to passerine pollination in the Merianieae. He decided to...

Welcome Constantin Kopper, our new PhD student!
I am happy to welcome Constantin Kopper as new PhD student in the Schönenberger lab! Constantin will be working with me on floral evolution and pollination syndromes in the plant family Melastomataceae, which contains more than...

#EtlDellingerLaGambaTakeover of GFÖ Twitter account!
All February, together with my colleague Florian Etl and the Tropical Field Station La Gamba, I will be tweeting about our ongoing research projects in the tropics! We will talk about unexpected discoveries, preliminary results,...

New pollinator observations in Melastomataceae!
Together with my Master student Constantin Kopper, I travelled to Colombia and Costa Rica in February and March 2020 to collect flower material of various Melastomataceae species and perform new pollinator observations. We had...

Melastome seminar series launched!
Launched!! Together with my colleagues Lucas Bacci, Thuane Bochorny, Fabián Michelangeli, Vinicius Brito and Ana Flávia Caetano, I have initiated a new online seminar series on Melastomataceae! Inspired by the fantastic...
New project funded!! 😀
I am very excited to announce that my new project on investigating the biotic and abiotic drivers of diversification in Merianieae has been funded through the post-doc Hertha-Firnberg programme through the Austrian Science Fund...