This September, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin once again invites you to the Digital Science Communication Cafe. This month again in English. Get ready to get exciting insights from our scientist into their work while drinking coffee in front of the screens in a relaxed atmosphere. Everyone is invited to ask questions and contribute to the conversation.
This time we have invited Dr. Eliana Buenaventura, Scientific Head of the Diptera Collection (two-wing collection) at the Museum für Naturkunde. The collection is an extremely valuable resource, as some species are no longer present in nature today due to species and ecosystem loss. On the other hand, new species are constantly being found in the collections and researched by Eliana Buenaventura. Collecting data from museum specimens such as insect abundance and distribution data can also contribute to our understanding of human impacts on the environment, including climate change.
At the Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery of the museum, Eliana monitors about one and a half million prepared flies and mosquitoes and uses these insects as a source of biological tissue for phylogenomic studies. Her research falls into the field known as ‘museomics’, where museum specimens or parts of them are used for genomic studies. Thus, she uses very small amounts of DNA preserved in museum specimens for answering biological questions, similar to a forensic scientist who uses DNA traces to solve crimes. Actually, some of her flies are of forensic importance, so her works, at times, is truly related to forensic sciences.
Learn more about the research of the evolution of flies and about the work of a Scientific Head of a collection. Bring along a lot of questions and a coffee thirst!
Event information
- Topic: Evolution of flies and diptera
- with Dr. Eliana Buenaventura, Scientific Head of the Diptera Collection at the Museum für Naturkunde
- Moderation: Franziska Sattler
- Participation via Zoom or YouTube
Related links
- Information about the Experimentierfeld
- An overview of other digital offers can be found here: For Nature digital.