Michael Meusburger, BSc

michael.meusburger@student.uibk.ac.at

Nature brings great challenges and forces the organisms living in it to constantly adapt to a wide variety of habitat types. I have always been fascinated by the different strategies and sometimes bizarre behaviour of some animals in order to adapt to the habitat requirements. So, it was clear to me that I wanted to study in this direction. I never focussed on a specific group of animals, because I wanted to understand the large ecosystem and the connections between animals and nature.

While my bachelor’s thesis focused on grouse and their habitats, my master’s thesis is now focussing on amphibians in the Inn Valley. I am particularly focussing on the grass frog and common toad and which environmental parameters support or prevent their occurrence. To find this out, we (together with Cheyenne Del Nin, Sebastian Wildauer, and Clara Zencominierski) are investigating the entire Inn Valley and the bodies of water we have found in three rounds of surveys. In addition to the visual search for spawn, larvae and adults, a landing net is also used in the third round to catch barely visible amphibian larvae as well as other animals living in the water body. In addition to the vegetation parameters, the fauna in the water can also be described and correlations analysed.

Research topics:
Adaptation
Biodiversity
Ecological niche modelling
Herpetology
Wildlife monitoring