Public evening lecture by Professor Dr. Jürgen Rudolf Gadau (University of Münster, Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity) as part of the lecture series "Planet Earth 3.0 - Living in a changing world"

While it is currently being debated whether we are living in the Anthropocene, a geological age characterized by humans - Homo sapiens - I will introduce the other animal, "the ant", which has been shaping the world for more than 100 million years. Like humans, its success is largely due to its social organization and cultivation of other species. Since there is not just one, but more than 20,000 ant species, and ants outnumber humans many times over, I will argue that we might as well discuss whether we should not better speak of the Myrmeocene (myrmecology = ant science). Ants are also good indicators of the effects of climate change, as they are found worldwide and in almost all biomes.

Jürgen Gadau is a behavioral ecologist and molecular evolutionary biologist who has been working with ants for more than 30 years. He has traveled to all continents with the exception of the Arctic and Antarctic, where there are no ants, and has collected ants for his research or conducted experiments with ants on site. He studied at the University of Würzburg and completed his doctorate, returning to Würzburg after two years as a postdoc at the University of California, Davis. He then worked as a professor at Arizona State University for twelve years. Since 2016, he has been Professor of Molecular Evolutionary Biology and Sociobiology at the University of Münster.

Moderation: Professor Dr. Philipp Lehmann