Annalisa Geyer
MSc student

Department of Environment & Biodiversity – University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Straße 34, A-5020 Salzburg

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The most fascinating thing for me is the huge variety of life forms nature has created, how this variety of organisms looks like and how different organisms live together. I love to learn more about inconspicuous things, which are only visible with a closer look, like the beauty of insects and spiders which is only seen with magnification, fungi connecting trees in huge underground networks around kilometer wide forests, or whole small ecosystems of invertebrates hidden between the branches of a city tree.
During my studies at the universities of Graz and Salzburg I learned about many different aspects of biology, and developed an interest especially in plants, arthropods and fungi. I am also curious about how and why communities are shaped like they are, and how species interact and affect each other as well as how they are affected by the environment.
Currently I am working on my master’s thesis about how aquatic microecosystems are used by terrestrial animals as birds and small mammals, with a focus on predation, and how the aquatic macroinvertebrate communities may be affected by these cross-system interactions. The study site is the city of Salzburg, which adds another aspect – how urbanization, with a highly heterogeneous environment strongly shaped by human activities, affects these (trophic) interactions.