Presentation on Subfossil Beetles and Climate Reconstruction at the University of Innsbruck

In the beginning of June, I was invited to give a presentation at the colloquium series of the Department of Botany of the University of Innsbruck. This small city, which is the capitol of Tirol, is wedged between the high mountains of the Austrian Alps and gives a perfect mixture of nature and culture. Innsbruck is a Medieval city with many tourist visitors both during summer and winter and has two universities with many foreign students.

My host, Laurent Marquer, is a palynologist and a group leader at the Department of Botany since 2020. As a palynologist and paleoecologist, he focuses on dynamic vegetation modelling and climate-based modelling. For a new project in the region of Tirol, different paleo-proxies for temperature will be used to better estimate the role of climate in the historical vegetation changes in the region. Subfossil beetle remains, which are my specialty, can be identified to species level and used for temperature reconstructions as well. Based on the temperature niches of climate-sensitive species, the Mutual Climatic Range method is used to establish the summer and winter temperature ranges for beetle species assemblages that were found in the sediment. With this method, that I’m currently testing for a couple of sites in the eastern Baltic region, I hope to be involved in future projects of the University of Innsbruck.

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