I am actually not quite sure why I studied biology. Just after school, I would have studied ancient languages or music. But somehow, I took a gap year as an au pair in London, and at some point there, I decided to be a geneticist. When I actually studied biology at the University of Tübingen, I found lab work very dull (sorry, lab people!) and became more interested in classic organismic questions in evolutionary biology. How do species and higher taxa evolve? Why are some species so different from others, while other taxa seem to consist of a lot of indistinguishable species? How did life win against all those mass extinctions?

I delved into zoology and palaeontology (though I also did a course on Gaelic music during an exchange year at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland). I enjoyed being in the field and decided to become a herpetologist (because you have to get up early for birds, but you can work late in the evening for frogs). I did my diploma thesis in southern Brazil on phenotypic plasticity of tadpoles. That was a lot of fun, and it showed me how different tropical ecosystems are from anything we have here in Germany.

Though I did not really want to do a PhD and applied (unsuccessfully) for lots of “real jobs”, I ended up getting a PhD from Imperial College London – I tempted the universe by doing only a single PhD application, which was to a European doctoral network because I fancied going back to the UK and because one of the nine PhD positions on offer had “amphibians” in the title… And I must admit, doing the PhD really hooked me on a research career about all things macro. I investigated why species are threatened, mostly with global mammal datasets and not amphibians, but I did not mind because I really enjoyed (and enjoy) answering comparative questions across lots of species.

I went on to a postdoc in Denmark, which got me into birds, and then worked at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt am Main for over 13 years as a postdoc, junior group leader, and finally professor. I am still interested in those macroevolutionary questions and managed to work in macroecology, biogeography, and paleoecology, building a great network of collaborators and getting the chance to lead a wonderful research group.

While you could say my research program lacks focus, I keep it diverse on purpose – I believe you need different approaches and interdisciplinary synthesis to understand the processes behind biodiversity. So, I feel perfectly placed now at iDiv, because it is a unique and astonishing network across different aspects of biodiversity science, and I am looking forward to working with all (or at least most) of you.

Contact: susanne.fritz@idiv.de