Tiny animals with surprising characteristics

Tze Hann Ng is researching with a Humboldt Research Fellowship for two years at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity at Münster University. WWU - Peter Leßmann When Dr. Tze Hann Ng stands in front of the transparent water tanks in the lab and points to her test objects behind the glass, any observers with an untrained eye initially see.. nothing. However, after they rub their eyes and look a little more closely, a few dots can be made out in the water. And in fact these are actually crustaceans, each around just one millimetre in size, and are known as copepods. These creatures, which are probably unspectacular for most people, fascinate Tze Hann Ng. For more than a year now, at the University of Münster, she has been studying the mechanisms of the immune system of these tiny animals.