Research spotlights

Citizen Science: Social media helps discover new plant species

17. January 2023 | Research spotlights

An Australian-German research team led by SNSB botanist Andreas Fleischmann has discovered six new carnivorous sundew species from Western Australia. Actually nothing special for botanists – however, four of the six new species were identified from photos posted on social media channels by nature photographers. The researchers have now published the results of their investigations […]

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Cross-border data pipeline for the flora of the Bohemian Forest

10. November 2022 | Research spotlights

A German-Czech research team presents a new binational data infrastructure. Over the past four years, the project “Flora of the Bohemian Forest” has made scientific data available from historical species monitoring projects in both countries as well as new data on the current plant diversity of the Bohemian Forest (Šumava). The data is publicly online […]

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Bavarian Environment Minister Glauber awards SNSB botanist Andreas Fleischmann the Bavarian Environmental Medal

23. September 2022 | Research spotlights

SNSB botanist PD Dr. Andreas Fleischmann of the Bavarian State Collection for Botany (SNSB-BSM) received the Environmental Medal of the Free State of Bavaria on September 22nd 2022. During an honorary ceremony in the former Dominican Church in Bamberg, Bavarian Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber presented the award. As curator of flowering plants at the Bavarian […]

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Genomes reveal hidden potential of lichens

27. June 2022 | Research spotlights

Among other things, lichens produce substances with biotic effects that are of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry – so-called secondary lichen substances. Researchers of the Bavarian State Collection for Botany (SNSB-BSM), in cooperation with scientists of the LMU Munich, found through genome analyses an unexpectedly high number of previously unknown gene segments responsible for […]

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SNSB develops new diagnostic app for natural science objects

8. April 2022 | Research spotlights

The IT Center of the Bavarian Natural History Collections (SNSB) presented its new app ‘DiversityNaviKey’ (DNK) – a tool for reliable identification of natural science objects. The application is based on scientific data sources managed by the established database system of the SNSB, Diversity Workbench. The freely accessible software application DiversityNaviKey (DNK) is a generic […]

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Looking inside the stomach of carnivorous plants – genetic “botanical crime scene investigation” reveals diet

21. March 2022 | Research spotlights

SNSB researchers determine the exact diet of Australian carnivorous plants by analyzing the genes of their prey. Even tiny parasites on captured insects could be detected in this way. The scientists have now published the results of their study in the journal Scientific Reports. Carnivorous plants attract, catch and digest small animals in order to […]

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NFDI4Biodiversity supersedes GFBio

11. February 2022 | Research spotlights

2022-02-11 – Since 2013, the research initiative German Federation for Biological Data (GFBio) has been pursuing the goal of permanently securing and preserving biological and ecological research data – in order to make them accessible to scientists worldwide for their research. The association of around 20 scientific partner institutions was funded by the German Research […]

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Integration of Research Data Explains the Global Occurrence of Lichens Based on the Function of Their Secondary Metabolites

21. January 2022 | Research spotlights

The global distribution patterns of lichen communities consisting of fungi and algae are not only an effect of internal evolutionary processes

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Endangered Plant Species in Bavaria

13. April 2021 | Research spotlights

In cooperation and with funding from the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU), a new Red List of endangered ferns and flowering plants of Bavaria is currently being compiled by scientist

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Endangered Botanic Predators: Globally, One Fourth of Carnivorous Plants Are Threatened

24. September 2020 | Research spotlights

An international research team including botanist Andreas Fleischmann from SNSB-BSM has evaluated the Red List threat categories for all 860 known species of carnivorous plants in the light of the 21st Century – the Anthropocene, i.e. the geological time impacted by human ecological influences like habitat destruction, pollution and global climate change. The scientists now […]

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