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My name is Xiaoqing Hou and I’m a new PhD student in the Pheromone Group since November last year, supported by a scholarship form CSC.

I’m from a small city in the north of China. I received my bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Nanjing Agricultural University. My master major is Agricultural Entomology and Pest Control, and I focused on exploring the effects of biochar amendment to soil on feeding behavior and life history of Nilaparvata lugens.

The genes encoding olfactory receptors (ORs) are identified in many insects. Some ORs are highly specific and bind only a few odorants, while others are promiscuous, but we are far from understanding where in these receptors selectivity and sensitivity are encoded. In my PhD project I will study the functional significance of sequence variation in insect olfactory receptors (ORs).

januari 27, 2017

Inger Ekström

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I did my PhD study at the Linnaeus University, Sweden and postdoc at University of Hawaii on microbial ecology and oceanography characterizing distribution patterns and responses to predicted climate change among marine bacterial assemblages. In much of my recent work I applied theoretical ecological frameworks such as metapopulation and metacommunity models to understand biogeography of marine microbes.

Currently I am working with Charlie Cornwallis and Karin Rengefors among others, in a collaborative interdisciplinary project on the genetic mechanisms involved in the evolution of multicellularity in microbes. The goal of this evolutionary ecology project is to determine what genetic factors allow particular unicellular organisms to take the evolutionary leap toward a multicellular life style, in particular in the model organism
Chlamydomonas sp. but also among other unicellular organisms carrying the capacity to become multicellular.

januari 9, 2017

Inger Ekström

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Hello all! My name is Johanna Yourstone and I am very excited to start my PhD position at the Biodiversity unit, with main supervisor Ola Olsson and co-supervisor Henrik Smith.

I have been studying biology at Lund University the last couple of years (with some breaks for adventures and art studies) and I did my bachelor thesis on the impact of a neonicotinoid on solitary bees. Since then I have been very fascinated by bees and pollination ecology, which together with birding, botany and other nerdy interests brings me out in nature whenever chance is.

In my project I will look at the effect of spatio-temporal flower resource variation (related to agriculture intensity and landscape complexity) on bumblebees. I will go in-depth investigating diet, colony growth, reproduction and morphology and also add a historical aspect by investigating bumblebee-specimen collected during the last century. I hope my research will bring new light to the reasons behind bumblebee declines and provide a foundation for more efficient conservation measures.

See you in the corridors!

januari 9, 2017

Inger Ekström

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Hej! My name is Dafne Ram and I am a new PhD student at the Biodiversity Unit. I will study how birds and butterflies are distributed at the forest-farmland interface and how they respond to changes in land use and climate. I will work under supervision of Åke Lindström, Lars Pettersson and Paul Caplat.

I am from the Netherlands, where I completed my bachelor studies on nature and wildlife management. I then did my master degree here in Lund majoring in animal ecology. After my master I have worked on a project on forest bird trends with Åke Lindström and others at the Biodiversity/Monitoring group. I am very excited to continue working in this group as a PhD student!

januari 9, 2017

Inger Ekström

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I have just received my Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and I am now working as a post-doc with Charlie Cornwallis. For my Ph.D. research, I used birds as a model system to test predictions from inclusive fitness theory about the evolution of cooperation.

Charlie and I will develop some of this work and use phylogenetic comparative methods to improve our understanding of altruism in particular. Why is investing in another individual’s reproduction a better strategy for transmitting genes to future generations than breeding independently? What are the consequences of having altruistic helpers for subsequent evolution? Why do some groups with altruistic helpers transform into superorganisms but not others? Are superorganisms ’individuals’, allowing for adaptation at the level of the group? Hopefully nothing too ambitious!

december 7, 2016

Inger Ekström

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I am currently at Lund University on the last year of the International postdoc grant from VR working in Lars Råberg’s group with Borrelia. I am interested on host-pathogen interactions and to understand processes of diversification in pathogen populations.

I received my PhD at Linnaeus University in 2012 where I studied influenza A virus circulating in wild birds sampled at Ottenby, southern Sweden. I was investigating the seasonal dynamics of the virus in migratory hosts, costs of infection and the patterns in subtype diversity at the population and individual levels. The individual infection histories of re-captured mallards indicated that there was strong influence of the virus causing primary infections on the probability of secondary infection by a specific subtype. During the time as postdoc at The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA I tested the influence of the primary infection on the re-infection patterns in mallards by performing experimental infections and exploring the development of cross-immunity to influenza between subtypes. Re-infection in the mallards with a range of  subtypes/different viruses indicates that similar subtypes of influenza induce strong protection against infection which implies strong competition in the system that may be driving the diversification of subtypes. Similar processes seem to act in the Borrelia system causing Lyme disease in humans. Therefore it will be exciting to explore the diversity of Borrelia!

november 29, 2016

Inger Ekström

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