Institut für Lebensmittelwissenschaft und Biotechnologie

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Comparison of floral traits in Calibrachoa cultivars and assessment of their impacts on attractiveness to flower-visiting insects
(2021) Marquardt, Melanie; Kienbaum, Lydia; Losert, Dominik; Kretschmer, Lea Annina; Rigling, Marina; Zhang, Yanyan; Schweikert, Karsten; Westermann, Nils; Ruttensperger, Ute; Rosenkranz, Peter
Ornamental plants are appreciated by humans for their colorfulness, beauty, abundant flowering and long blooming periods. Many ornamental plants can also constitute an additional foraging resource for flower-visiting insects. However, the ability of the popular ornamental plant Calibrachoa to support urban insect communities is not well documented. In this study, 20 different Calibrachoa cultivars were selected and tested in regard to their insect friendliness based on standardized observations (I) in flight tents using the large earth bumble bee Bombus terrestris as a model species and (II) in open field trials. To investigate what floral characteristics might constitute attractiveness to bumble bees, various floral traits were recorded and compared across all tested Calibrachoa cultivars. Over a two-year period, a total of 6,327 foraging bumble bees were recorded in the tent observations. In the open field observations, we counted 4,188 flower-visiting insects. Our results revealed that (I) all Calibrachoa cultivars were visited by insects for foraging, (II) the number of insect visitors varied significantly among the 20 tested cultivars and (III) the cultivars displayed different floral traits. For the morphometric floral traits and the aroma profiles of Calibrachoa, only the mean nectar quantity and a few identified compounds could be correlated with attractiveness to the model species B. terrestris. We also found that the petal color of the tested cultivars had a significant impact on the number of visitors. Therefore, B. terrestris clearly preferred red or blue Calibrachoa cultivars over those with other petal colors. However, as the cultivar preferences in the different insect groups differed, it is highly recommended to use various cultivars in urban plantings. Nevertheless, efforts must be made to explain what additional floral traits make Calibrachoa and other ornamental plants generally attractive to flower visitors. This information can then be used for breeding purposes to increase the insect friendliness of ornamental plants.
Dairy byproducts as sustainable alternatives to FCS in 2D and 3D skeletal muscle cell cultures
(2025) Baldeweg, Tobias Horst; Hubel, Philipp; Günther, Johannes; Ostertag, Fabian; Nellinger, Svenja; Heine, Simon; Kluger, Petra Juliane
Skeletal muscle tissue engineering is a rapidly developing field with applications in disease modelling, tissue replacement, biorobotics, and cultivated meat. The need for more sustainable and ethical biotechnologies has grown due to concerns about resource scarcity, climate change, and animal welfare. One major challenge is replacing fetal calf serum (FCS), a widely used but ethically and environmentally highly problematic media supplement. A promising alternative is the utilization of natural byproducts such as whey and colostrum from the dairy industry, which provide essential nutrients and growth factors. In this study, wheys produced by microfiltration of raw milk and colostrum were investigated as FCS replacements for culturing C2C12 skeletal muscle cells. Composition analysis confirmed a variety of pro-proliferative compounds in both substances. Cell culture experiments led to the development of an optimized medium formulation based on colostrum whey. Colostrum whey medium (CM) supported cell proliferation and maintained the myogenic differentiation potential for over 30 days. Additionally, a CM-based freezing solution enabled effective cryopreservation throughout culture. In 3D static suspension culture, CM sustained viable spheroids for over 14 days. Spheroids showed significantly higher proliferation compared to those in serum-containing medium, making CM suitable for 3D modelling and scale-up of biomass production. These findings highlight CM as a sustainable, cost-effective, and ethical alternative for skeletal muscle tissue engineering, particularly in cultivated meat production.
Seasonal variation in the diurnal activity pattern of Eurasian blackbirds (Turdus merula) in the forest
(2024) Schlindwein, Xenia; Randler, Christoph; Kalb, Nadine; Dvorak, Jan; Gottschalk, Thomas K.
Camera traps are increasingly used to estimate the density of animals as well as their activity patterns. As camera traps allow monitoring of animals over long periods of time without disturbance, they are especially useful to observe changes in diurnal activity patterns over time. In ornithology, camera trapping is still in its infancy. To our knowledge, no study has yet investigated the activity pattern of a songbird over the full annual cycle. We used camera traps in the Rammert, a small mountainous forest area near Rottenburg in Southwest Germany to monitor the diurnal activity pattern of forest-dwelling Eurasian blackbirds ( Turdus merula ). As the activity level of animals is known to be affected by day light, we used double-anchoring transformation of day times to account for the variation in sunrise and sunset across the different seasons. By generating activity models, we investigated the pattern of blackbird activity during the four seasons of the year and compared the patterns of male and female birds, respectively. A significant difference between a unimodal activity pattern in spring and a bimodal pattern for the rest of the year was found which might be related to breeding and territorial behaviour in spring. Moreover, we observed that the activity pattern of males and females overlapped greatly but still showed some variation in the number and timing of density peaks.

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