Nice to meet you! My name is Varpu Pärssinen and I’ve started my PhD studies at the Aquatic Ecology unit. My supervisor is Anders Nilsson, with Kaj Hulthén and Christer Brönmark as my co-supervisors.
I did my BS and MS studies in the University of Helsinki, Finland, with Ecology and evolutionary biology as my major. In my previous theses I have focused mainly on animal behaviour and sexual selection. I’ve also had the pleasure to do field and lab work in many different groups and projects, involving sticklebacks, common gobies, and the Glanville fritillary butterfly. I also love
birdwatching in my meantime.
My PhD project in Lund studies how natural selection affects the fitness of hybrids between isolated populations. I’m using the Bahamas mosquitofish as a model animal, working together with the Langerhans Lab in North Carolina, US. I’m very happy to work as a part of this international collaboration, researching one of the main mechanisms of speciation!
