Andreas Maas
Workgroup Biosystematic Documentation
University of Ulm
Helmholtzstrasse 20
D-89081 Ulm
Germany

Andreas Maas is a research assistant at the University of Ulm. He studied biology at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany and graduated in 1998 with a diploma thesis on the larval development of the Antarctic krill Euphausia superba. In 2002 he made his PhD in zoology at the University of Ulm. Andreas studied a Cambrian group of crustaceans, the Phosphatocopina, that systematic position within Crustacea could be established as the sister group of the crustacean crown group, the Eucrustacea. The material of his study is part of the so-called ‘Orsten’ type of preservation that leads to three-dimensional fossils of mainly less than 1 mm in size. Since 2002 Andreas is also involved in teaching at the University of Ulm. He was part of a German-Chinese research cooperation and was able to work on fossils from the famous Lower Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. With this Andreas consolidated his main research subject in the early evolution and phylogeny of arthropods. He could widen this subject also on the question of the phylogenetic position of arthropods within the Bilateria. Andreas worked on very early, worm-like arthropods without sclerotised dorsal tergites that were from the same Cambrian material as the phosphatocopines before. Another important Cambrian fossil he described was a minute, Cambrian, possibly immature stage of a new species of Cycloneuralia. Shergoldana australiensis gives some clues about the evolution of larval forms within Nemathelminthes. This is especially important since arthropods are regarded as close relatives of round worms nowadays. Andreas’ research techniques comprise mainly scanning electron microscopy due to the small size of the fossils. Important other skills are computer-aided imagery and computer-aided phylogeny analyses. Andreas teaches evolutionary biology including history and background of Darwin’s important work and evolution, systematics and phylogeny of animals, Metazoa.