The Quaternary Ostracoda of Eastern Germany

Ostracoda (Crustacea) are important proxies of palaeolimnological analysis, especially in Quaternary continental sediments. They allow tracing temperature changes, salinity, oxygen availability, productivity, pollution, or turbulence to name only a few environmental factors. Autecological tolerances allow the reconstruction of habitats and environmental parameters, often in a quantitative way. Despite there is a long and intense history of ostracod research in Germany, no compilation is available since Klie (1938).

Within a new research project, we intend to compile all information about Recent and Quaternary Ostracoda of Germany and began in the Baltic Sea and the East, i.e. the area of the former GDR. Plenty of material and many publications are available: Thousands of micropalaeontological slides with picked Quaternary ostracods and foraminifera from the former exploration company Erdöl-Erdgas Gommern, similar numbers of slides from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin filled by Kurt Diebel und Erika Pietrzeniuk in the 1960ies to 1990ies and many more at museums and geological surveys of the eastern Federal states plus several dozens of widely scattered papers on Recent and Quaternary ostracods provide a huge and unique dataset to make use of. This dataset will be palaeoecologically and biostratigraphically analysed and made accessible to the public within a searchable database. We expect distinct progress by using documented association data for better characterizing habitats, climatic changes and biogeographic patterns. Furthermore, the biostratigraphic values of ostracod species will be improved.

We kindly ask colleagues for information about hidden collections or documentations of German Quaternary ostracods to enlarge our database.