Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP)
Jena
Senckenberg Institute for Plant Form and Function (SIP) was founded in June 2024 in cooperation with the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. In Jena, the eighth Senckenberg Institute will comprehensively analyze biodiversity change in the Anthropocene – the age shaped by humans – using modern and innovative methods in temporal depth and spatial breadth. The professorships for Integrative Taxonomy of Plants and for Functional Biodiversity of Plants already established at the University of Jena will, in collaboration with two new Senckenberg professorships for Ecology and Evolution of Mosses and “Digital Collectomics,” use the collections of the Jena herbarium for their research in order to investigate biodiversity change.
With 3.5 million specimens, the Herbarium Hausknecht is one of the most important herbaria in Europe and is also the largest regional botanical collection in Germany. Through digitization combined with ‘imaging’ and the inclusion of artificial intelligence and ‘deep learning’, through the integration of databases, and through the application of molecular genetic methods, the extensive potential of this unique collection for the analysis of biodiversity change can now be raised and shared. The aim is to reconstruct biodiversity and its changes and interactions in a spatially explicit manner over a period of the last century and to develop forecasts and options for action for the conservation of biodiversity.
