CHRISTIAN KRAUS

Scientific Education

since 2022 PhD student | NTNU Trondheim | Norway
2019 - 2021 Master of Science | University of Wuerzburg | Germany
2015 - 2018 Bachelor of Science | University of Wuerzburg | Germany

Applied Techniques

Research Interest

During my studies of Biology, I have become increasingly interested in animal orientation and the neural correlates of orientation behaviors. As a Bachelor student in the lab of Basil el Jundi, I was interested in understanding how Monarch butterflies use different visual cues, such as a simulated sun and local landmarks, for orientation during flight. I continued as a Master student investigating the Monarch butterfly brain with electrophysiological tetrode recordings. My focus in this project was to study the neuronal tuning of the heading-direction system in the Monarch butterfly central complex.
My PhD project further builds on my previous experiments by investigating the integration of multimodal sensory information in the central complex and how orientation decisions are made based on these signals.

PUblications

• Beetz MJ, Kraus C, el Jundi B (2023) Neural representation of goal direction in the monarch butterfly brain. Nature Comm 14:5859.
• 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.
• Franzke M*, Kraus C*, Dreyer D, Pfeiffer K, Beetz MJ, Stoeckl AL, Foster JJ, Warrant EJ, el Jundi B (2020) Spatial orientation based on multiple visual cues in non-migratory monarch butterflies. J Exp Biol 223: jeb223800.

*equal contribution​​