Scientific live animal husbandry, Bonn

Our task

In addition to the live animals in the exhibition area (Water - Life in the River), the Museum Koenig also houses a scientific live animal facility. In modern terrarium and aquarium facilities, lower vertebrates (fish, amphibians and reptiles) and various invertebrates are kept and bred for research purposes. Keeping live animals enables studies that are difficult to carry out in the wild and thus provides important insights into behavioural and reproductive biology, larval development or functional morphology, for example. The information obtained in this way supports collection-based research and field work on taxonomic and evolutionary biology issues, but also helps to protect species by collecting useful data for conservation breeding programmes or for the protection of natural populations.

Fish

The focus of research in the aquaria is on Southeast Asian fishes from Sulawesi. Current projects are investigating the functional and ecomorphology of an adaptive radiation of the sunray fish of Sulawesi, especially their jaw apparatus and its effect on feeding behaviour, as well as the evolution of the unique reproductive strategy of rice fish, which is being explored using breeding lines.

Frogs

In amphibians, research focusses on the developmental biology of tropical frogs, their larval development, comparative larval morphology and bioacoustics.