Anna Küchler

Anna Küchler is currently working on the project ‘BE-Spring as her PhD project: Discovering Collembola biodiversity on grasslands with emerging genomic and metagenomic tools’ within the Biodiversity Exploratories, funded by DFG. In this project she aims to establish a springtail (Collembola) genome reference database (SGRD) for the most abundant soil springtail species on the 150 Exploratories grassland plots distributed across Northern-, Central- and Southern Germany (in the Biosphere Reserve Schorfheide-Chorin, the National Park Hainich and the Biosphere Reserve Schwäbische Alb, respectively). Using a shotgun metagenomic approach established within ‘MetaInvert’ her goal is to then describe these springtail communities and investigate (1) how environmental drivers and the intensification of grassland-use influence springtail community composition and functioning and (2) how springtails relate to other biological components of the grassland ecosystems. Alongside Miki Bálint, also Clément Schneider (head of the Apterygota section, SGN Görlitz) and Pete Manning (head of the working group ‘Causes and Consequences of biodiversity change’, S-BikF) are involved as project PI’s, as well as Dennis Baulechner and Volkmar Wolters (Justus Liebig University, Gießen & RESOILIENCE project, Biodiversity Exploratories)