CAnMove

Research

My research deals with causes and consequences of migration and dispersal in freshwater organisms. A major focus is on seasonal migration in cyprinid fishes that leave their lake and move into streams and wetlands during winter. We believe that this is due to seasonal changes in habitat-specific trade-offs between costs and benefits, i.e. seasonal changes in growth and mortality risk in the lake and stream, respectively. We have also found that this is an example of partial migration where an individual’s decision to migrate or not is in part determined by its condition. In future research we wish to study if there is a genetic component behind partial migration as well. We also predict that fish migration have far reaching consequences for the structure and dynamics of the lake ecosystem as a large proportion of the dominant zooplanktivorous fish leave the lake during a major part of the year.
A second project deals with the evolution of local adaptations and phenotypic plasticity of morphological and behavioural defences against predation. Theoretical models suggest that high migration or dispersal rates should favour plasticity over evolution of constitutive, locally adapted defences. We test this using freshwater prey organisms that show considerable variability in their dispersal ability. For example, our recent results suggest the importance of a high dispersal ability for the evolution of an inducible, morphological defence in a freshwater snail, Radix balthica.