Fabian Royer, BSc

Room 518
Fabian.Royer@student.uibk.ac.at

I am student in the master`s programme Ecology and Biodiversity. Considering today`s biodiversity crisis, I decided early on this and started studying biology in Innsbruck in 2018. Recently, I am following the question of how some of our most important pollinators are interacting with each other. Therefore, Julia Schlick-Steiner and I focus on the relation between honeybees and wild bees regarding microbiome transfer. Especially in grassland and farmland and around settlements, one can see very high densities of honeybees (Apis mellifera) – which are susceptible to pathogens. Infections of the partly rare wild bees (400 species in Tyrol), or at least an exchange of microbiome in general, seem possible. In addition, in the wake of bee mortality, beekeeping became more popular. All this increases food competition for nectar and pollen as well as the risk of infections. We collect wild bees and honeybees around Innsbruck in different habitats from apple plantations to alpine grasslands. The extraction of DNA and RNA should give us insights in the bacterial communities and viruses inside our bees.

Research topics
Bees
Conservation biology
Microbiome research
Pollination ecology