15.09.2023

Not only in the tropics do snake bites lead to dangerous envenoming – bites from European venomous snakes can also cause severe physical damage. But their venom also contains active substances that could be used against bacterial pathogens in the future. Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Giessen and the Hessian LOEWE-TBG are investigating the venoms of European snakes and have recently decoded the venom cocktail of the Milos viper native to Greece. Their study was published in the journal “Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences.

The now published study underlines that there is still much to learn about snake venoms beyond the particularly dangerous, tropical species. “It is of enormous importance that we develop a better understanding of the venom composition, function and poisoning symptoms of European venomous snakes as well,” Lüddecke says. “We will now pursue this task with special focus, targeting in particular our species found in Germany. We also know very little about their venoms,” Schulte adds.

For more infos see press release at Senckenberg. (Photo: Thomas Lindner)

02.08.2023

It is one of the most endangered mammal species in Western Europe: the Common hamster (Cricetus cricetus), also known as the European hamster. Once hunted intensively as an “agricultural pest” and for its multi-coloured furs, a significant decline in its population has been recorded since the 1970s. Without further research and conservation measures, the Common hamster could become completely extinct in the next twenty years, according to forecasts.

Preventing this in Hesse, Germany, is the goal of the new project “MetaHamster”, which focuses primarily on genomic data and involves scientists and conservation actors from various institutions, including the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research and the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE Centre TBG) in Frankfurt am Main.

The project is funded by the State of Hesse within the framework of the Lore Steubing Institute (LSI) for Nature Conservation and Biodiversity of the Hessian Agency for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology (HLNUG).

For more infos see press release at Senckenberg. (Photo: Manfred Sattler)

30.06.2023

Science does not take a deep enough look at chemicals in the environment as one of the causes of the decline in biodiversity. Forty scientists in the RobustNature research network of Goethe University Frankfurt and collaborating institutes, among them LOEWE-TBG have corroborated this in a study that has now been published in the journal “Nature Ecology and Evolution". The researchers regard an interdisciplinary approach as a new opportunity to better understand biodiversity loss in order to be able to take more efficient countermeasures. To this end, they are studying the interactions between chemical pollution and biodiversity loss. 

The authors call for a stronger interdisciplinary focus in research so that the impacts of chemical substances on biodiversity can be better understood and mitigated. They also highlight considerable challenges: for example, basic data are often lacking; each area under study has specific characteristics; the processes at ecosystem scale are complex. To meet these challenges, the researchers have made 16 recommendations. They suggest, for example, obligating industry to make relevant data public. Or they propose developing ecological test models that cover not only individual organisms but also populations, communities or even entire ecosystems.

For more infos see press release at the Goethe University (Photo: Markus Bernards)