The Department of Ecology and Genetics is part of the Evolutionary Biology Centre (EBC) and is organized in five research programs:

• Animal Ecology
• Evolutionary Biology
• Limnology
• Plant Ecology and Evolution
• Population and Conservation Biology

Evolutionary ecology and genetics form the core of our research activities and are studied in animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms. This includes a number of high-profile projects on the processes of natural and sexual selection, local adaptation, speciation, and molecular evolution. We also harbour a strong research initiative on processes affecting microbial diversity and ecosystem function. Various fundamental and applied aspects of conservation biology, including effects of global climatic change, are also part of our collective research. Approaches used range from field experiments to large-scale genome analyses, in the latter case mainly using next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches.