Award Ceremony Prix Schläfli 2025 in Biology

Ewa Merz was awarded the Prix Schläfli in Biology 2025 for her work biotic interactions and environmental variability shaping the coexistence of plankton species. The jury was impressed by the paper she published in 2023 in the journal Nature Climate Change with the title: ‘Disruption of ecological networks in lakes by climate change and nutrient fluctuations’

In her PhD work Ewa Merz focused on estimating species interactions in plankton communities, and addressing the critical challenge of how those interactions respond to abiotic environmental changes, e.g., eutrophication and climate warming. Her research bridges theoretical network ecology with observations of environmental changes in nature. She developed cutting-edge methodological approaches to address fundamental questions in ecological theory and produces insights that are directly applicable to lake ecosystem management. In the paper which earned her this award she combines four decades of plankton community data from ten Swiss lakes with innovative analytical approaches to reveal how interaction networks respond to climate warming and re-oligotrophication. She developed novel modifications to existing empirical dynamic modelling techniques to address the specific challenges of analys ing time-varying interactions in lake networks. Her study advances our understanding of how climate change impacts entire ecological communities and their structural stability.

The Award Ceremony will take place on 13 Ferbuary 2026 during the Biology26 meeting in Neuchâtel.