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 tremendously rewarding, and I enjoy engaging in science between playing with my little darling. Second – a big shout out to my lab! As PIs, when we are around and have enough time, we oftentimes feel we need to monitor all the steps of a project, help and solve problems. While support remains important, I have also understood that all my lab members perfectly organize themselves and together create an environment that is both fun and active as well as based on helping and learning from each other! In the past months, we did not only have successes (Constantin Kopper published his first first-author paper!) but also new students arriving (Johan Urrea from Colombia joined us to start up exciting work on pollination and fruit dispersal in Blakea!) or deepening their work (Viki Wieser and Fabian Polz decided to do their master theses in my lab). Further, we have had the opportunity to host Mario Vallejo-Marín from the University of Uppsala in early June and had a week filled with discussions and talks about buzz-pollination and floral biomechanics. Similarly, just now in July, Vini de Brito and César Arvelos (University of Uberlândia), Lílian Melo (University of Uppsala) and Ash Kerber (University of Colorado at Boulder), all colleagues working on buzz-pollination in Melastomataceae with us, visited Vienna before we all travelled to the International Botanical Congress in Madrid. Further, we have been involved in the University of Vienna Children’s university offering workshops on pollination to groups of kids (7-12 years old) – a lot of fun, and many tricky questions from the little scientists! At this point, I want to give a big shoutout to my lab members, the effort, work and creativity they are putting into creating this a fun and welcoming environment is amazing! Similarly, they lovingly welcome my little one when we come to campus together and have meetings with a little toddler crawling on the floor. I very much enjoy seeing the lab move from a place that is shaped by me to a place that is shaped by all members.
Motherhood and amazing colleagues!
