Ole Seehausen

Ole Seehausen is a Professor of Aquatic Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern and the Department Head of Fish Ecology and Evolution at the Eawag Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology. An ecologist and evolutionary biologist, Seehausen has dedicated much of his career to understanding the evolutionary processes and ecological mechanisms by which biological diversity arises, those that maintain it, and those by which it is lost.

His interest in how ecological opportunity, ecological and sexual selection, and interspecific hybridization interact with each other and with evolutionary constraint in the diversification of species, and how these processes leads to macro-ecological patterns have contributed to two major undertakings. He has studied the large adaptive radiations of cichlid fish in African lakes for more than 35 years, especially the radiations in Lake Victoria and smaller lakes in Tanzania and Uganda, and in lake Mweru.  He established a second research program - parallel to the African cichlids - to investigate adaptive radiations of fish in the postglacial subalpine lake system of the European Alps. In both instances, he is gaining an understanding of how to improve biodiversity conservation.

Seehausen is working, increasingly, on more integrative and interdisciplinary projects, in which he contributes elements of Evolutionary Biodiversity Dynamics (EBD) to larger questions in environmental and societal contexts, such as climate change and inequity.