Kai Jäckels, BSc

Room 511
Kai.Jaeckels@student.uibk.ac.at

For as long as I can remember, I have loved spending time outdoors and observing animals – especially insects – as they go about their lives. As I grew older, my curiosity about the living world around me only deepened and I wanted to understand how it all worked. Inspired by my big sister, who is also a biologist, I decided to follow in her footsteps and pursued a bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Innsbruck.

During my bachelor’s thesis, I worked with wild bees for the first time and was immediately fascinated by their incredible diversity in both morphology and ecology. Studying bees mostly means going where the bees are, which suited me perfectly, as I have always preferred fieldwork over lab work.

Since then, my interest in wild bees has only grown. I have collaborated on projects with the National Museum for Natural History in Luxembourg and have developed a habit of interrupting hikes by stopping at every flower in search of an interesting bee.

For my master’s thesis, I will continue working with wild bees, this time focusing on competition between wild bees and honeybees. Together with Sara Raj Pant and Maria Hirschvogel, we also worked on tracking wild bumble bee flights in an alpine environment using a harmonic radar.

Research topics
Bees
Biodiversity
Conservation biology