Who we are
The International Max Planck Research School for Quantitative Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution from Lab to Field (IMPRS-QBEE) is a joint initiative of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the University of Konstanz (UKON). It provides doctoral students with an interdisciplinary training environment at one of the world’s leading centres for research on behaviour, ecology, evolution, and collective dynamics.
This “from lab to field” approach is more than a programme title—it is the central scientific philosophy of the IMPRS-QBEE. Few doctoral programmes worldwide combine mechanistic and evolutionary perspectives within a single research environment while simultaneously providing access to long-term field sites, advanced technological infrastructure, and internationally recognised expertise across multiple biological disciplines.
The defining strength of IMPRS-QBEE lies in its ability to connect biological research across scales, systems, and methodologies. Our faculty combines expertise ranging from neurobiology and physiology to behavioural ecology, movement ecology, collective behaviour, environmental genomics, and evolutionary biology. Doctoral students are trained to integrate laboratory experiments, field studies, computational modelling and emerging technologies into a coherent scientific framework.
Scientific Orientation
The scientific mission of IMPRS-QBEE is to understand how behaviour, ecological interactions, and evolutionary processes emerge, interact, and change across biological scales. To address these questions, the programme combines three complementary scientific pillars:
Mechanisms of behaviour and cognition
Our faculty investigates the physiological, neural and behavioural mechanisms that generate adaptive responses in animals and other organisms. Our research spans neurobiology, sensory ecology, cognition and decision-making, linking individual behaviour to ecological and evolutionary processes.
Ecology and evolution in changing environments
Our researchers explore how organisms interact with each other and with their environments, how ecological interactions shape biodiversity and how populations respond to environmental change. Our topics range from plant–soil interactions and microbial communities to animal societies and ecosystem dynamics.
Collective behaviour, movement and large-scale biological systems
A major strength of IMPRS-QBEE is the study of collective phenomena across biological levels. Using advanced tracking technologies, computational modelling and large-scale field studies, faculty investigate migration, social organisation, collective decision-making and the emergence of complex biological systems.
Vision Statement
The vision of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) forms the basis for the IMPRS-QBEE, as we will prepare our IMPRS graduates to understand and predict behaviour, ecology, and evolution in the natural world. Our mission is to reveal the drivers of behaviour, ecology, and evolution across temporal, spatial, organisational, and taxonomic scales by developing and applying emerging technological and analytical approaches. To meet this challenge in all its complexity, we have brought together a diverse, interdisciplinary IMPRS faculty and multiple collaborative research opportunities to produce rigorous, reproducible science that is shared openly. In this way, we contribute positively to the global research community, providing scientific training in our innovative IMPRS programme to empower the next generation. Together with our faculty members from the DDepartment of Biology of the University of Konstanz (UKON), we foster a supportive and inclusive work environment that will further promote intellectual exchange and productive collaboration.
Organisational structure
The IMPRS-QBEE board is responsible for the strategic development and operational oversight of the programme. It consists of six members: One MPI-AB director, one UKON professor, two additional faculty members, plus two doctoral representatives who together have one vote in the board. Arrows indicate the election process. The senior part of the IMPRS-QBEE board is elected into office for two years by the faculty members during the faculty retreat and general assembly meeting, and doctoral representatives are elected by the doctoral researchers each year.
