Biologibloggen

My name is Elisa Thoral and I started my postdoctoral project with Andreas Nord in the end of July. After having done all my studies and my PhD in Lyon, France, I am now in Sweden for the next 2 years!

During my Masters and my PhD, I was interested in the effects of multiple environmental stressors, such as variations in temperature, oxygen and food availability, on the metabolism of different fish species (sardine, goldfish, zebrafish, rainbow trout, sea bass and sea bream). More specifically, I studied the muscular metabolism of these animals at different biological scales, from the whole individual, by focusing on the swimming performance, to the cell, where I focused on mitochondrial metabolism. I have shown through several scientific articles that the responses to environmental stress observed at the different scales do not necessarily go in the same direction, thus sometimes complicating the predictions that could be made about the effects of climate change on these animals!

After my PhD, I spent another year in my laboratory in Lyon as a temporary teaching and research associate, which can be considered as a first postdoctoral project. During this year, I taught different scientific subjects, as I had already done during my PhD, and I also had several research projects in parallel, this time combining the study of muscle metabolism with heat waves and new muscle sampling methods in goldfish, apron, and round goby.

And so I went straight to this postdoctoral project at Lund University where I am still interested in the effects of thermal variations on mitochondrial metabolism, but this time on a completely different model: birds! I am now trying to understand the metabolic consequences of sudden heat waves or cooling in different tissues, but also at different life stages in Japanese quails.

And on a personal note, I am a fan of movies, reading and hiking!

augusti 26, 2022

Inger Ekström

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Hello everyone!

I’m Emma Kärrnäs, a PhD student that started earlier this year in the systematic biology group. Originally from an island off the Swedish west coast, I decided to move to Lund to study biology. I’ve been fascinated by nature for as long as I can remember, so I believe no one was surprised by my choice of subject.

I evidently felt at home here in Lund, since I decided to stay for both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. For my master’s degree, I looked into the phylogenetic relationships of the tephritid fly genus Tephritis, as well as the different species’ use of host plants. After I finished, I worked as a research and lab assistant for six months. One of the projects included to genetically determine the closest relatives of the recently extinct Swedish population of Reverdin’s blue, Plebejus argyrognomon. I hope this information will be used to re-establish the species in Sweden in the near future.

I thought that for my PhD I ought to move somewhere else, having lived in Lund for quite a few years. However, the universe had other plans – I got an offer too good to decline! My PhD project will be to do a revision of two genera of parasitic wasps, Oomyzus and Quadrastichus, in the family Eulophidae. This will include finding species new to Sweden, and most probably also to describe species altogether new to science. This is really a dream come true! My main supervisors are Niklas Wahlberg and Christer Hansson. To resolve the relationships within these two tricky genera, I will be working with both morphological and genetic markers. I will use both material I collect myself and material from museum collections. If you have seen the small black tent outside of the Ecology building, this is an insect trap I use to get additional samples!

So, let’s finish off with something a bit more personal. On my spare time, I, maybe not surprisingly, love spending time in nature – doing photography, birdwatching and bird ringing. I also enjoy exercising and cooking – and I love trying out new flavours of ice cream in my ice cream machine.

augusti 18, 2022

Inger Ekström

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