Strengthening the bond between people and nature – that is the aim of a German-Dutch EU project involving participants from Oldenburg. The reasoning behind this is that people who feel they are part of the environment are more likely to work to preserve it.

Honeybees are consistently able to find their way back to the hive despite their tiny brains. In an article published in Nature, a group of international researchers, including Jacqueline Degen, reports on how the insects’ navigation strategy could be used in autonomous flying robots.

How do migratory birds and other species navigate over thousands of kilometres? This is the question that drives Henrik Mouritsen. In the podcast ‘Hirn gehört’, the spokesperson for the NaviSense Cluster of Excellence talks about his career, fieldwork in the jungle and unexpected discoveries.

Weak electromagnetic fields show an unexpectedly long-lasting effect on migratory behaviour, according to a recent study by an international research team published in the journal Science.

The university is set to acquire a unique research facility, as recommended by the German Council of Science and Humanities. The 'NaviGate' building has been designed for the study of animal navigation in realistic conditions. 

A milestone for neuroscience: researchers from Oldenburg and London have created the first-ever 3D atlas of a migratory bird’s brain. 

Antarctic krill cover vast distances during their migrations in the Southern Ocean. Researchers from the NaviSense Cluster of Excellence are setting up camp in Antarctica to investigate how these crustaceans navigate on their long journeys.

In Oldenburg, citizens can vote on 22 February on whether the city's tree protection statutes should be retained. In this interview, geographer Thorsten Balke talks about the special importance of trees for the urban climate.

Light pollution poses a growing threat to moths. In her Lightstar project, which has been awarded a prestigious EU Starting Grant worth 1.5 million euros, zoologist Jacqueline Degen will investigate the underlying mechanisms.

An international research team including neuroscientists Henrik Mouritsen and Karin Dedek has made a surprising discovery: Bird retinas – among the most energy-demanding tissues in the animal kingdom – operate permanently without oxygen.

On a remote island in the Indian Ocean, an international team has observed the activity of compass neurons in the wild for the first time. Their study involved researchers from Oldenburg and has now been published in the journal Science.

Phytoplankton is the basic food source for many aquatic organisms. A new study shows that the light spectrum is more important for these microalgae and for lake ecosystems than previously assumed.

Australian bogong moths are famous for their long-distance migrations. An international team including Oldenburg researchers has discovered that the insects use the stars as a compass during their annual journey to cool inland caves.

In order to calibrate tiny radio transmitters, researchers from the Migration Ecology working group took to the skies. Their unique experiment was designed to enable more accurate tracking of migratory bird routes.

The German Research Foundation is funding the „DynaDeep” project by Oldenburg hydrogeologist Gudrun Massmann with around five million euros for a further four years. A large part of the research will take place on Spiekeroog.

The rapid movements of electrons in solids or molecules can be analysed much more easily than before thanks to a development by researchers in Oldenburg. The team presents the new method in the journal Optica.

The first international symposium of the Collaborative Research Centre "Magnetoreception and Navigation in Vertebrates" attracted many international guests. The programme ranged from how moths navigate to exotic quantum materials and robots that fly like birds.

Henrik Mouritsen was on the US podcast Radiolab, chatting with host Annie McEwen about the idea that birds use a quantum compass to navigate and how they might visualize the magnetic field. 

Science is also suffering from the war in Ukraine. Botanist Dirk Albach explains how his colleagues in Kiev are coping with the restrictions.

Desert ants rely on a special component of the Earth's magnetic field to navigate. Their magnetic sense may be based on magnetic particles, according to a new study that has now been published in the journal Current Biology.