Basil el Jundi, PhD
Group Leader

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SCIENTIFIC Education

• since   2022 Professor (Associate) at the NTNU Trondheim (Norway)
• 2017 - 2022 DFG Emmy-Noether Fellow at the University of Wuerzburg (Germany)
• 2016 - 2017 Research Fellow at the Lund University (Sweden) 
• 2012 - 2015 Postdocteral Fellow at the Lund University (Sweden)
• 2008 - 2011 PhD at the University of Marburg (Germany)
• 2003 - 2008 Diploma at the University of Marburg (Germany)

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Research Interest

My research aims at understanding how insects use different cues in their environment to set and mantain a desired heading, and how these cues are intergrated in the brain. I have started my research as a PhD student in the laboratory of Uwe Homberg (University of Marburg, Germany), where I studied the sky-compass network in the desert locust brain anatomically and electrophysiologically. Afterwards, I was a postdoc and research fellow in Marie Dacke's lab in the Lund Vision Group (Lund University, Sweden) where I investigated compass orientation in South-African ball-rolling dung beetles through electrophysiological, neuroanatomical, and behavioral experiments. Since 2017, I have started my independent research group. In my group we are focusing on the migratory behavior of the North American monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus. To understand how these animals use different orientation cues to find their way to their overwintering site in Central Mexico, we use a combination of behavioral, anatomical, and electrophysiological approaches.

SElected Publications (FolLow Link for full publication list)

• Franzke M, Kraus C, Gayler M, Dreyer D, Pfeiffer K, el Jundi B (2022) Stimulus-dependent orientation strategies in monarch butterflies. J Exp Biol 225: jeb243687. 
• Beetz MJ, Kraus C, Franzke M, Dreyer D, Strube-Bloss MF, Rössler W, Warrant EJ, Merlin C, el Jundi B (2022) Flight-induced compass representation in the monarch butterfly heading network. Curr Biol ​32: 338-349.
• Nguyen TAT, Beetz MJ, Merlin C, el Jundi B (2021) Sun compass neurons are tuned to migratory orientation in monarch butterflies. Proc R Soc B 288: 20202988.
• Dacke M, Bell ATA, Foster JJ, Baird EJ, Strube-Bloss MF, Byrne MJ, and el Jundi B (2019) Multimodal cue integration in the dung beetle compass. PNAS 116:14248-14253.
• Immonen EV, Dacke M, Heinze S, and el Jundi B (2017) Anatomical organization of the brain of a diurnal and a nocturnal dung beetle, J Comp Neurol 525: 1879-1908.