Som vi tidigare meddelat har en av våra trognaste medarbetare, Jon Loman, gått bort. Vi bad en av Jons närmaste medarbetare Thomas Madsen att ge en översikt över Jons rika och mångåriga bidrag till forskningen och verksamheten vid institutionen. Här ges en kort översikt över Jons arbeten.
Jan-Åke Nilsson och Carin Jarl-Sunesson
Jon Loman was born in 1949 in Eskilstuna, but grew up in Stockholm and moved to Lund in 1955.
During 1972 to 1980 Jon completed his Ph.D. on the ecology of the hooded crow (Corvus cornix) at the University of Lund under the supervision of Sam Erlinge. The research focused on the ecology of a crow population by means of wing tagged birds in order to elucidate factors that affected individual variation in behaviour and performance.
After the PhD Jon worked for two years (1980 to 1982) with theoretical analyses of predator – prey interactions in general and, in particular, in the vertebrate community of the Revinge area, studied by a research group at the Ecology department in Lund.
Between 1982 and 1985 Jon worked on a project entitled ”The Vertebrate Fauna in the Agricultural Landscape” (SNV) (from 1983 as project leader). In this project he analysed the distribution of vertebrate populations from a landscape ecology perspective focusing on patch size and isolation on population density and species richness. Taxa considered were birds, small mammals and frogs.
From 1985 to 1988 Jon led the project ”Seed Predation as a Limiting Factor for Plants in the Agricultural Landscape”, financed by SNV, focusing on small mammal seed predation and its effect in small and large habitat islands.
From 1988 to 1994 Jon was employed by SJFR in a research project entitled ”Habitat Fragmentation as a Limiting Factor for the Fauna in Agricultural Landscapes” and ”Microevolution of the common frog in an agricultural landscape”. The model species used were the common frog (Rana temporaria), moorfrog (Rana arvalis), and the common Toad (Bufo bufo) in the agricultural landscape. The main goal was to determine what factors limit the distribution of these migratory species in a highly fragmented landscape.
Between 1994 and 2002 Jon was employed as lecturer by the University in Lund but part of his duties included supervision of the Animal Ecology department’s computers.
In 2002 Jon started his own consulting company “Rana Konsult” and he performed several long-term studies (> 20 years) on the phenology, population dy namics and migration of frogs and toads in the province of Scania.
Between 2002and 2005 Jon was employed as scientist by the University of Lund and his research project entitled ”Landscape ecology and pond quality. Field experimental studies of frogs in an agricultural landscape” was financed by FORMAS.
It is obvious from the text above that Jon had an outstanding capacity to conduct top quality research in quite disparate research fields i.e. mathematic modelling, individual behaviour, population dynamics, landscape ecology and the study of ecological community dynamics.
Jon supervised two Ph.D. students (Thomas Madsen and Björn Lardner), one Licentiate (Fil lic.) student (Ralph Tramontano) and published more than 90 scientific papers.
Thomas Madsen
