Michael Heethoff

Michael Heethoff is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt in the Department of Animal Evolutionary Ecology. His research spans soil ecology, chemical defense mechanisms in arthropods, functional morphology of microarthropods, and the evolution of parthenogenesis. He leads interdisciplinary projects using Synchrotron X-ray tomography and DISC3D for 3D insect digitization.

• PhD in Genetic Diversity of Parthenogenetic Oribatid Mites (2003, TU Darmstadt)
• Habilitation on Evolution and Ecology of Oribatid Mites (2012, University of Tübingen)

His work integrates chemical ecology with biomechanical modeling, focusing on predator-prey dynamics and forest soil community responses to climate change. Recent publications highlight collaborations in biomedical image segmentation and genetic studies of arthropod defense systems.

He advises PhD students Jascha Höpfner, Arianna Tartara, and Matteo Trevisan, and has secured grants from DFG and BMBF for projects like ASTOR and Predator-Prey Networks. His lab investigates tropical rainforest regeneration in Ecuador and microclimatic changes in Hessian forests.