Christina successfully defended her PhD thesis in August 2017 and left us in January 2018 to start a postdoc in Bergen.

Topic of the PhD thesis:

Parasitic arthropods play a very important role in modern ecosystems, but their impact in the past, millions of years ago, has barely been studied. Therefore, there is a special scientific interest in this kind of research. Today, parasitic species can be found in very different arthropod groups, for example, in the crustacean groups Isopoda (incl. wood lice), Copepoda, or Branchiura (fish lice), in Acari (mites) among chelicerates, but also in insect groups, such as Mantispidae or Siphonaptera (fleas).

To get access to fossil parasitic arthropods, particularly Mesozoic limestones and Eocene amber present important data sources. Fossils from these sources are well preserved and rather easily recognizable, that it is even possible to see details like the ommatidia in eyes.

I started my PhD project in September 2014 with the global theme: “Parasitic arthropods: a comparative zoological-palaeontological study“. The main focus of my studies is to investigate the functional morphology of supposed parasitic arthropods and their ecological impact. To get reliable results, I always compare the fossil parasites with recent relatives, if present.

For documentation, I use numerous imaging techniques, e.g., composite macro photography, stereo photography, fluorescence microscopy, micro CT or virtual surface reconstructions.

At the moment, my main research focus are isopods as fish parasites (Cymothoidae). I have access to several fish fossils associated with cymothoids from the Jurassic Solnhofen limestones and to recent marine cymothoids.

Awards:

04/2017: Third award for poster presentation. Crustaceologists meeting 2017, Berlin

03/2015: First award for oral presentation. Crustaceologists meeting 2015, Bremerhaven

03/2013: Second award for oral presentation. Crustaceologists meeting 2013, Greifswald

Fellowships and Grants:

08/2017: travel grants of DAAD and ISIM for the International Congress on Invertebrate Morphology in Moscow

10/2014–08/2017: PhD fellowship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes 

02/2016: EU-Synthesys grant for research visit to Zoological Museum Copenhagen

09/2015: travel grant of DAAD for Annual meeting of the German Zoological Society in Graz

04–09/2013: general study grant "Deutschlandstipendium" of the Technical University Munich

03/2013: travel grant of Glaxo Smith Kline for the Crustaceologists meeting in Greifswald

Publications:

Nagler, C., Haug, J. T., Glenner, H. & Buckeridge, J. 2017. Litholepas klausreschi gen. et sp. nov., a new neolepadine barnacle (Cirripedia, Thoracica) on a sponge from the Upper Jurassic lithographic limestones of southern Germany. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie-Abhandlungen 284, 29–42. DOI 10.1127/njgpa/2017/0648

Nagler, C., Hörnig, M. K., Haug, J. T., Noever, C., Høeg, J. T. & Glenner, H. 2017. The bigger, the better? Volume measurements of parasites and hosts: Parasitic barnacles (Cirripedia, Rhizocephala) and their decapod hosts. PLoS ONE 12, e0179958. Free access PDF

Nagler, C., Hyžný, M. & Haug, J. T. 2017. 168 million years old “marine lice” and the evolution of parasitism within isopods. BMC Evolutionary Biology 17, 76. Free access PDF

Nagler, C., Haug, C., Resch, U., Kriwet, J. & Haug, J. T. 2016. 150 million years old isopods on fishes: a possible case of palaeo-parasitism. Bulletin of Geosciences 91, 1–12. Free access PDF

Nagler, C. & Haug, J. T. 2016. Functional morphology of parasitic isopods: understanding morphological adaptations of attachment and feeding structures in Nerocila as a pre-requisite for reconstructing the evolution of Cymothoidae. PeerJ 4, e2188. Free access PDF

Serrano-Sánchez, M. L., Nagler, C., Haug, C., Haug, J. T., Centeno-García, E. & Vega, F. J. 2016. The first fossil record of larval stages of parasitic isopods: cryptoniscus larvae preserved in Miocene amber. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Abhandlungen 279(1), 97–106.

DOI 10.1127/njgpa/2016/0543

Nagler, C. & Haug, J. T. 2015. From fossil parasitoids to vectors: insects as parasites and hosts. In: De Baets, K. & Littlewood, T. (eds.) Fossil parasites. Advances in Parasitology 90, Elsevier, 137–200. Link to publisher

Matzke-Karasz, R., Nagler, C. & Hofmann, S. 2014. The ostracod springtail – camera recordings of a previously undescribed high-speed escape jump in the genus Tanycypris (Cypridoidea, Ostracoda). Crustaceana 87, 1072–1094. DOI: 10.1163/15685403-00003343.

Nagler, C., Geist, J. & Matzke-Karasz, R. 2014. Revision of the genus Tanycypris (Ostracoda, Cypricercinae) with the description of Tanycypris alfonsi n. sp., and an identification key to the genus. Zootaxa 38214, 401–424. Free access PDF