biology

Marie Dacke

Marie Dacke is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Marie Dacke rather than just read about it. In short: Marie Ann-Charlotte Dacke is a professor of Sensory Biology at the Lund Vision Group in Lund University, Lund, Sweden. Her research focuses on nocturnal and diurnal compass systems, using the dung beetle as a model organism.

Key takeaways

Marie Dacke belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Marie Dacke to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Marie Dacke from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Marie Ann-Charlotte Dacke is a professor of Sensory Biology at the Lund Vision Group in Lund University, Lund, Sweden. Her research focuses on nocturnal and diurnal compass systems, using the dung beetle as a model organism. Dacke is a Wallenberg Scholar as of 2025. In 2022, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Dacke has an interest in public science education, and is a panel member of the Swedish TV show Studio Natur. In 2013, she received an Ig Nobel Prize for her work on the navigation system of dung beetles. Since 2018, she is also an honorary professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Early life and career Dacke went to high school in Landskrona. After graduating from high school she attended Lund University, where she studied biology. Here, she completed her Ph.D. on Celestial Orientation in Dim Light in 2003, under the supervision of Professor Dan-Eric Nilsson. Her thesis focused on how optical compasses are built, how they are used and how they are adapted to work at low light intensities. During her Ph.D, she discovered a unique compass organ in spiders, a study which was published in Nature in 1999. A few years later she revealed the first evidence of an animal able to use the dim pattern of polarized moon-light for orientation, a study also published in Nature in 2003. After her Ph.D., she spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Visual Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra. In 2007, she returned to Lund University as a research fellow and in 2011 she became an associate professor in Sensory Biology. She became a Professor in Sensory Biology in 2017. Dacke's research focuses on navigation and orientation in insects, in particular orientation in dung beetles. She is interested in the celestial compass (which is the use of the sky to guide navigation). By exploring the interface between behaviour, neurobiology and cognition, her research tries to understand how diurnal and nocturnal compass systems of insects work. In 2013, she, together with Marcus Byrne, Emily Baird, Clark Scholtz and Eric Warrant, received the Ig Nobel Prize in the joint astronomy and biology category for showing that nocturnal dung beetles can use the Milky Way as a compass. This research was published in Current Biology. In 2014, Dacke received an Excellent Young Researchers grant from the Swedish Research Council to continue her research on the compass systems of dung beetles, exploring the link between electrophysiology and behaviour. Part of this research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2015 and Current Biology in 2016. In 2018, Dacke received funding from the European Research Council to expand her work, and define the principles behind multimodal navigational systems, studying brain activity in dung beetles as they perform their orientation behaviour. Part of this cross-disciplinary research was published in PNAS in 2019 and iScience in 2022. Dacke has been elected a fellow of the Young Academy of Sweden (2011), Royal Physiographic Society of Lund (2017), Royal Entomological Society of London (2018), Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2022) and Societas Ad Sciendum (2023). Since 2025 she has been a Wallenberg Scholar.

Science communication Dacke has been a panel member on the Swedish TV show Studio Natur (currently streaming on SVT Play) since 2010. In 2012, Dacke was named best science communicator in Sweden in the national competition Forskar Grand Prix (Science Grand Prix). In 2012, Dacke was one of the scientists to appear in a series about research and researchers produced by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and TV4. In 2019, she gave the Royal Entomological Society's Verrall Lecture at the Natural History Museum, London, speaking about As the crow flies, and the beetle rolls: straight-line orientation from behaviour to neurons. Dacke has authored two books; Trädgårdsdjur – myllret och mångfalden som växterna älskar (Roos & Tegnér, ISBN 9789188953629) (co-authored with Låtta Skogh) in 2020, and Taggad att leva – igelkottens liv, historiska resa och hotande framtid (Roos & Tegnér, ISBN 9789189215368), in 2021.

External links Staff page at Lund University Personal page at Sveriges Unga Akademi

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Marie Dacke

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Marie Dacke claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Marie Dacke before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Marie Dacke ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Marie Dacke

In research: Marie Dacke appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Marie Dacke in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Marie Dacke is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1973 births, Academic staff of Lund University, Ig Nobel laureates, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Marie Dacke outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Marie Dacke in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Marie Dacke means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Marie Dacke out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Marie Dacke in simple terms?

Why does Marie Dacke matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Marie Dacke?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Marie Dacke.