Jan Wölfer

I received my Bachelor’s degree in biology at the MLU Halle-Wittenberg in 2012 and my Master’s degree in evolution, ecology and systematics at the FSU Jena in 2014. During my Master’s program, I focused on the functional morphology of the vertebrate locomotor apparatus.
Starting in 2014 at the HU Berlin, I worked on my Ph.D. thesis which was concerned with the evolution of the locomotor apparatus in squirrel-related rodents (Sciuromorpha, Mammalia), defending it in 2020. Afterwards, I worked for half a year as a statistics freelancer at a company, assisting Bachelor, Master, and Ph.D. students with the quantitative analysis of their theses.
Since 2020, I am a research and teaching assistant at the HU Berlin. My interest lies in the macroevolution of the locomotor apparatus in mammals with a specific focus on rodents. I most commonly use 3D imaging techniques to sample biomechanically informed traits from museum collection specimens and leverage macroevolutionary models to investigate the adaptive significance of these traits with regard to the ecological profile of the studied taxa. However, I also conduct experimental kinetic/kinematic studies to obtain a deeper insight into the biomechanics of mammal locomotion.