New challenges, new opportunities: Our team is still evolving

Congratulations to our colleague, Ewa Babkiewicz, PhD (University of Warsaw Biological and Chemical Research Centre, Faculty of Biology), who successfully defended her PhD thesis on January 22nd of this year.

Mrs Babkiewicz defended her PhD dissertation entitled “The effect of the temperature on the reaction distance and spatial learning in planktivorous fish.”

She investigated the impact of temperature on cognitive processes in planktivorous fish, aiming to answer questions such as how elevated environmental temperatures affect the distance at which fish respond to visual stimuli and how it influences the rate of spatial learning.

The research results indicated that elevated environmental temperatures increase the reaction distance of fish to visual stimuli (including potential prey) and accelerate the pace of learning orientation in space. Consequently, this may lead to increased pressure from planktivorous fish on zooplankton, partially explaining the phenomenon of smaller body sizes of planktonic organisms in waters with elevated temperatures.

“It was a long and demanding process, but definitely worth every effort. Now it’s time for new challenges and further development of research in the field of environmental ecology.” said Ewa Babkiewicz, PhD shortly after her defense.

Pict.: Ewa Babkiewicz, PhD with employees, PhD students of the Department of Hydrobiology at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Warsaw, her mother and co-authors of the works included in the dissertation, along with a mock-up of a zebrafish fish on which most of the research and experiments were conducted.

Once again, congratulations! We are delighted that as a member of the Lakes Connect team,  Ewa Babkiewicz, PhD will bring her new experiences to further research on freshwater ecology.

Pict.: The model consists of zebrafish and plankton animals

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