Koen Verhoeven has been named professor by special appointment in Plant Ecology and Evolution at the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), part of the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). His research focuses on micro-evolution and how plants adapt to rapidly changing environments. Verhoeven will combine the professorship with his work as a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). He started at the beginning of the year.

Bewick’s swans are migrating less and less far to the southwest in winter. On average, they spend the winter 118 kilometres closer to their breeding grounds for every 1 degree Celsius increase in winter temperature. In his PhD research, Hans Linssen of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) shows that this adaptation is the result of two processes. First, the birds are responding to the temperature: when it is warm in the fall, they do not migrate as far. Second, young birds are less likely than their parents to return to where they spent a previous winter, instead remaining further northeast.

NIOO scientist Paul Bodelier has been appointed as professor of Functional Microbial Ecology at the Faculty of Sciences in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.