IMIS

I am a researcher in paleobiology focusing on a variety of different subjects. This ranges from science to museum/collection work and includes databasing and digitalizing. My research has a strong focus on taxonomy, systematics and nomenclature, but also extends to studies on biodiversity, biogeography and evolution. My prime taxonomic focus is on fossil freshwater and terrestrial gastropods. In 2014 I got involved in WoRMS as editor of the Thematic Species Database "FreshGEN" (https://www.marinespecies.org/freshgen/). Since then, I have contributed to expanding WoRMS towards the entire fossil record of non-marine gastropods. More recently, I have extended my databasing efforts towards freshwater and brackish-water bivalves as well. Aim for the coming years is to create an inventory of all non-marine fossil mollusk names of the entire Phanerozoic, their taxonomic statuses, geographic distributions and fossil ranges. Since I am a paleobiologist I am particularly interested in using these data to reconstruct diversity, distribution and evolution of these groups through space and time and eventually make more accurate predictions for future diversity change. WoRMS provides an ideal platform for this effort. The possibility to document and curate data on taxonomy, distribution, stratigraphy and literature and to make them freely accessible to a wider public is very important to me. Moreover, seeing the extensive utilization and consultation of WoRMS, including other major databases and the scientific community all around the world, is a great motivation to continue this endeavor and contribute to long-lasting species information backbone of Earth's biota.