Our research activity is focused on describing biological diversity and explaining the mechanisms of biological processes. Our main research topics include:

  1. Population, behavioural and evolutionary ecology of animals, e.g. habitat selection and population dynamics, ecological niche modelling, acoustic and visual communication, signaling, social information, sexual selection and its genetic basis, evolution of immune genes.
  2. Ecology of plants and plant communities, e.g. anthropogenic transformation of flora and vegetation, structure and dynamics of forest stands and communities, structure of vegetation landscapes.
  3. Ecology of water and peatland ecosystems, e.g. population dynamics of phyto- and zooplankton, structure of macrophytic communities, toxicology of algae, analyses of environmental gradients, the influence of eutrophication on functioning of water bodies.
  4. Biotic interactions, e.g. (i) between endophytic fungi, plants and insects, (i) between animal and plant parasites, their hosts and pathogens they transmit, (iii) co-evolution between parasites and hosts, (iv) the influence of large-scale ecological disturbances on inter-specific interactions.
  5. Taxonomy (including molecular), systematics and phylogeny of plants and animals.
  6. Biogeography and biodiversity of selected plant and animal taxa in global scale.
  7. Conservation biology and environmental protection.

We are involved also in applied research, such as:

  1. Species and habitat protection.
  2. Applied entomology and acarology.
  3. Environmental monitoring.
  4. Monitoring of pollen grains and fungal spores in the air: determining the spatiotemporal variation in the concentrations of these allergenic particles, and selecting environmental factors responsible for the observed changes.
  5. Assessment of ecological status of surface waters.
  6. Strategies for the protection and rehabilitation of water reservoirs and rivers.