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I thank Prof. Peter G. Kroth and Prof. Dieter Spiteller for supervising this PhD thesis, and Prof. Valentin Wittmann for co-supervision within the graduate school Chemical Biology. To the supervisors and to Dr. Matthias Buhmann and Dr. Miriam Windler: Thanks for introducing me to the worlds of diatoms and chemical communication generally, as well as specifically to the research topics at hand. Their scientific advice, as well as their open doors and ears for discussions and questions, made this thesis possible. I also wish to thank Prof. Thomas U. Mayer for agreeing to chair the dissertation examination.
A big round of "Thank you!"s goes out to my colleagues and the students in the Kroth lab: Doris Ballert, Dr. Carolina Rio Bartulos, Dariia Bova, Lili Chu, Lachlan Dow, Angelika Eckhardt, Dr. Daniela Ewe, Dr. Ansgar Gruber, Chao Huang, Mirta Jacobs, Dr. Bernard Lepetit, Martin Mavrogenis, Svenja Mayer, Annette Ramsberger, Anna Rast, Dr. Julia Rottberger, Dr. Matthias Sachse, Alexander Schober, Dr. Birgit Schulze, Manuel Serif, Guilan Yu and Shuran Yu. The same is true for the PIs, post-docs and PhD students in the neighbouring labs on M9. They all provided valuable advice about lab and office work, and contributed to an enjoyable and inspiring work environment.
Moreover, I am grateful to the bachelor, master, and summer students Laura Heinzelmann, Nadija Ishnazarova, Nadine Leubner, Joana Thiel and Sebastian Tischlik for trusting me with the role of a supervisor and for help with the laboratory work. I also thank Dr. Sabine Sturm for a variety of advice at the right times, Felix Schönenberger for advice about the scripted analysis of microscopic images, Jens Erat for helping with the leap of faith towards \LaTeX, Patrick Winter for advice about KNIME, Dr. Wayne Dawson for advice about the statistical evaluation of scanning electron micrographs, Kai-Uwe Eckhardt of the University of Rostock for advising about the Py-FIMS method, as well as for performing and evaluating those analyses, Dr. Anastasiia Kryvenda of the University of Göttingen for confirmation of the species identity of A.\ minutissimum frustules, the Mecking lab at the University of Konstanz for providing a DNOP sample, and Dr. Rick Scavetta of Science Craft the primer about data analysis and visualisation with R.
It was a privilege to be able to attend interesting and inspiring workshops and seminars by more people than I can name: the speakers and organisers of the course and seminar programs of the Konstanz Research School Chemical Biology (KoRS-CB), the university's Academic Staff Development, the Zukunftskolleg, as well as the equal opportunity mentoring and training staff. All of whom I hereby thank profoundly, and gratefully acknowledge the funding of my stipends by the KoRS-CB (GSC 218), the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz.
Of course, the administrative staff at these institutions, as well as at the secretariats of the biology and chemistry departments, and the central examination office of the University of Konstanz also provided help and advice. For that, I am particularly grateful to Dr. Heike Brandstädter, Sigrid Elmer, Dr. Roland Kissmehl, Katharina Magerkurth, Edelgard Matzner, Susanna Schnell, Andrea Schröpel and Dr. Anja Zitt.
And to you, dear reader: Thanks for your attention and for any constructive feedback you might send my way using katrin.leinweber@uni-konstanz.de or
github.com/katrinleinweber/PhD-thesis.
Last but not least, my whole-hearted gratitude belongs to my parents and relatives for their kind and motivational support.