Karl Eduard Linsenmair

Karl Eduard Linsenmair (born 8 February 1940) is a German biologist and university professor emeritus. His areas of work are general ecology, ethoecology, ecophysiology, sociobiology and orientation physiology; his focus is tropical ecology.

Life Linsenmair was born in Munich. He studied zoology, botany, chemistry, anthropology and psychology in Heidelberg, Freiburg and Frankfurt. He received his dissertation in 1966 (Construction and signaling function of the sand pyramid of the rider crab Ocypode saratan Forsk). (Decapoda Brachyura Ocypodidae)) received his doctorate. At the Goethe University Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main he was a DFG research fellow from 1967 to 1970 and a research assistant in the biology department at the University of Regensburg in 1970/1971 . He completed his habilitation in 1971 and taught at the University of Regensburg from 1972 to 1976. In 1976 he took over the chair of animal ecology at the Zoological Institute of the University of Würzburg.

Linsenmair has made a decisive contribution to the establishment and promotion of the research areas of tropical ecology and biodiversity. He initiated and coordinated the German Research Foundation (DFG) priority program “Mechanisms for the Conservation of Tropical Diversity” and the European Science Foundation program "Tropical Canopy Research", which has since been expanded to a global level. As the only biologist in the National Committee for Global Change Research, he was significantly involved in the development of the concept for the BMBF program BIOLOG-BIOTA. In this context, he led the BIOTA-West program, which aimed to use findings from basic ecological research to find concrete solutions to problems on the African continent. On a research trip there in 1973, he was fascinated by the incredible diversity of the different frogs. The Comoé National Park has been a World Heritage Site since 1983. In 1989 the first huts were built from bushes and leaves, eaten by termites within a year and rebuilt. As early as 1991, Linsenmair received funding from the Thyssen Foundation for his ecological research station. Due to bureaucratic hurdles imposed by offices, authorities and ministries, collecting all the signatures from the 20 bodies took nine years; The civil war officially ended in 2007, but it was only in 2011 that the government became somewhat stable and was able to contain the unrest that was flaring up. In 2012, Linsenmair returned to the savannah after the civil war and found the research station in ruins. He and his colleagues rebuilt everything. Today there are 14 guest houses with air conditioning and running water at a distance around the main building. The centerpiece is a long research building with a library, offices and laboratories. The station has had an internet connection since 2014 and research operations have started again.