Marc Bauhus

Animal Evolutionary Ecology
Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity
Hüfferstraße 1
D-48149 Münster
Tel.: +49 251/83-21653
marcbauhus@uni-muenster.de

Nationality: German

Education

• Since 2022:
  PhD studies in the Animal Evolutionary Ecology Group, Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity, University of Münster, Germany
• 2019 - 2022:
  Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Biosciences, University of Münster, Germany
  Master thesis: "How do sick fish sleep? – An experimental approach to test sleep behavior of three-spined stickleback upon Schistocephalus solidus infection"
• 2016 - 2019:
  Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Biosciences, University of Münster, Germany
  Bachelor thesis: "Macroinvertebrate colonization and breakdown dynamics of alder (Alnus glutinosa) and willow (Salix sp.) leaves at two different ecological sites of the river Münstersche Aa"

Work Experience

• 2021 - 2022:
  Student Assistant, Animal Evolutionary Ecology Group, Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity, University of Münster, Germany
• 2019 - 2020:
  Student Assistant, Animal Evolutionary Ecology Group, Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity, University of Münster, Germany
• 2019 - 2020:
  Student Assistant, Limnology Group, Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity, University of Münster, Germany
• 2017 - 2019:
  Student Trainee, Kölle-Zoo GmbH, Münster, Germany

Supervisors

• Prof. Joachim Kurtz, Animal Evolutionary Ecology Group, Institute of Evolution and Biodiversity, University of Münster
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Research Interests

• Evolutionary ecology
• Host-parasite interactions
• Immunology

PhD Project description

Genetic and phenotypic characterization of immunological niche conformance in cavefish

The immune system reflects an important adaptation to the individual parasitological niche. Since host-parasite interactions strongly influence the evolution of immune systems, different parasitological niches resulted in specific immunological phenotypes of hosts. For example, cave dwelling morphotypes of the Mexican tetra Astyanax mexicanus are exposed to low parasite abundances and diversity. Consequently, these fish invest more into the specific adaptive immune system. In contrast to that, surface populations of the same species show a strong unspecific innate immune investment due to a high parasite abundance and diversity in their stream environment. This raises the question whether an immunological adaptation to a certain parasite abundance and diversity affects the ability of the host to conform also to different parasitological niches. To study this hypothesized immunological niche conformance and potential physiological and genetic underpinnings, we will use A. mexicanus as a model system. At first, we will characterize parasitological niches of various cave and surface populations of A. mexicanus in the field via screening and collecting parasites together with measuring other parameters that might affect the immune phenotype. Then we will challenge individual lab-reared fish from the same populations with parasite-supernatants from different populations that we collected in the field to examine their degree of immunological niche conformance. This will include physiological and genetic methods such as image-based flow cytometry and single-cell RNA sequencing.