Isabelle Schön

 

Isa Schön is a senior evolutionary biologist and molecular ecologist with over 30 years of expertise in studying the paradox of sex, speciation, and adaptations to changing environments. She uses molecular and genomic tools to investigate these fundamental questions, focusing on non-marine ostracods and marine amphipods as model organisms.

 

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Function

Dr. Schön leads the Freshwater Biology Team at RBINS and has coordinated or participated in over 20 (inter-) national research projects. She served as Belgian PI for the Marie Curie RTN SexAsex and coordinated the RECTO project, including 6 partner institutions. Her research remains at the forefront of scientific developments, and has evolved from traditional genetics to cutting-edge genomics.

Dr. Schön works on non-marine ostracods and Antarctic marine invertebrates, studying asexual reproduction, speciation and the potential of transposons  for adaptations. She currently supervises six PhD students, serves as RBINS polar liaison and as guest professor at the Hasselt University.

Research team: Freshwater Biology
Research theme: Evolution and the Web of Life, Biodiversity in a changing world, Science for a sustainable marine management

 

Current Project(s)

Current projects include:

• The JPIO project PAGES - Process based Assessment for the Good Environmental Status; PI for the RBINS
• The Belspo project Monaspa - A multidisciplinary environmental monitoring program for ASPA 179 in the Western Sør Rondane Mountains; PI for the RBINS
• The Belspo project UNTANGLE - Understanding the role of transposons as novel forces in genomic landscapes; Project coordinator
• The Belspo project HabitAnt - Past and future habitability in Antarctic lakes: succession, colonization, extinction, and survival in glacial refugia; PI for the RBINS
• The Belspo project TANGO - Estimating Tipping points in habitability of ANtarctic benthic ecOsystems under future GlObal climate change scenarios; PI for the RBINS
• The Belspo project COPE - Conservation management of polar ecosystems: using genomic approaches to study connectivity; Project coordinator

 

Area of Expertise

Dr. Schön has extensive expertise in genetic and genomic methods, from laboratory procedures to phylogenetic and population genetic analyses and bioinformatics. She specializes in developing non-model organisms, such as ostracods and amphipods, and continues expanding her molecular toolkit to include high-throughput environmental DNA and metabarcoding techniques.

Her research spans diverse ecosystems worldwide—from ancient Lakes Tanganyika and Baikal to the Southern Ocean, North Sea, and freshwater bodies across Europe, Australia, and USA.

Dr. Schön has authored over 110 peer-reviewed publications and 200+ additional publications. She has supervised multiple postdoctoral researchers, seven PhD students and more than 30 Master's and Bachelor's students.

 

External activities

Dr. Schön has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Belgian Journal of Zoology since 2009 and is a founding member of Peer Community In Zoology. She is a board member and past president of the Royal Belgian Zoological Society.

Committed to advancing women in science, Dr. Schön co-founded and served as president of BeWiSe, the Belgian network for Women in Science, contributing to building more inclusive scientific communities. She regularly serves as reviewer for scientific journals and as evaluator for research funding proposals.

 

Dissemination activities

Leadership Dialogue Series: Dr. Isa Schön

 

Professional Experience

Dr. Schön exemplifies European scientific mobility. She completed her studies and PhD at Philipps University Marburg (Germany), where she served as assistant for Terrestrial Ecology, followed by postdoctoral positions at the University of Leeds (UK) and RBINS (Belgium). She has been awarded prestigious fellowships from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (Germany) and the EU Marie Curie Programme.

Her international experience includes multiple research stays in Australia, at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA (where she was awarded the Whitman Fellowship multiple times), and at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. This diverse international background has enriched her scientific perspective and fostered extensive collaborative networks worldwide.

 

Publication highlights

Schön I.*, Chimileski S.*, Mark Welch J. & Martens K. 2025. Vertical transmission of Cardinium bacteria in parthenogenetic non-marine ostracods (Crustacea). Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, 292, 20251193. * co-first https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.1193.

Schön I., Rodriguez F., Dunn M., Martens K., Shribak M. & Arkhipova I.R. 2021. A survey of transposon landscapes in the putative ancient asexual ostracod Darwinula stevensoni. Genes 12, 403. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12030401.

Tran Van P., Anselmetti Y., Bast J., Dumas Z., Galtier N., Jaron K., Martens K., Parker D., Robinson-Rechavi M., Schwander T., Simion P. & Schön I. 2021. First annotated genomes of draft genomes of three non-marine ostracods (Ostracoda, Crustacea) with different reproductive modes. Genes, Genomes, Genetics 11, jkab043. https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkab043.

Merckx T., Souffreau C., Kaiser A., Baardsen L.F., Backeljau B., Bonte D., Brans K.I., Cours M., Dahirel M., Debortoli N., De Wolf K., Engelen J.M.T, Fontaneto D., Gianuca A.T., Govaert L., Hendrickx F., Higuti J., Lens L., Martens K., Matheve H., Matthysen E., Piano E., Sablon R., Schön I., Van Doninck K., Luc De Meester L. & Van Dyck H. 2018. Body size shifts in aquatic and terrestrial urban communities. Nature 558, 113-116. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0140-0

Schön I., Martens,K. & Van Dijk P. (eds.) 2009. Lost sex. The evolutionary biology of parthenogenesis. 615 pp., 27 chapters and 96 figures. Springer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-90-481-2770-2