Hi everyone. My name is Mikkel Skovrind and I have recently started as a MSCA postdoctoral fellow at LU. I see myself as a classical naturalist driven by a fundamental curiosity – with a state-of-the-art toolbox to help me answer fundamental biological questions of how, when and where the genomic patterns we can observe today arose.
My research investigates how environmental heterogeneity, habitat use, and adaptation have shaped patterns of intraspecific diversity across space and time in marine vertebrates. I combine population genomics, of both modern and ancient samples, with insights from ecology, physiology, and behavioural biology, to investigate when, where and how the variation we observe in the natural world arose.
I did my PhD and a four-year postdoc at the GLOBE Institute UCPH where I was working with Arctic whales, primarily belugas, investigating their evolutionary and demographic histories in a range-wide context. My research usually has a non-genetic component such as environment, ecological or phenotype data as I believe the inclusion of supporting data makes the impact of the genomic result much greater and helps put their implications in perspective.
At Lund University my research includes high-coverage genomes from freshwater and brackish water ecotypes of pike and perch from the western Baltic Sea region. For each species, three separate population pairs (one freshwater and one brackish water population) as well as an ancestral population from central Europe are included. This enables me to investigate whether genomic adaptations are parallel in function, time and space – within and between species.
In addition to a broad scientific reach, I want my work to matter, and to be relevant to society. Throughout my career, I have forged strong partnerships with institutions, that have used the findings of my research to guide conservation and policy. I believe that my work, on both Arctic whales and brackish water fish, will aid the long-term conservation of vulnerable populations and make a lasting impact on biodiversity and society as a whole. I have contributed my expertise to the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission, the Danish professional working group on brackish water pike and perch (Rovfiskene tilbage til brakvandet) and consulted several Danish municipalities.
I am always open to collaborations, so please contact me if you think we could benefit from each other’s expertise.
Mikkel Skovrind
