CAnMove

Research

My field of research is plankton ecology and biogeography of aquatic microorganism. I work with aquatic free-living protists, which have complex life cycles involving both a benthic resting stage and a pelagic planktonic stage. The transitions between these stages involve migration through active swimming as well as passive sinking. Moreover, the benthic resting stages are often zygotes formed through sexual reproduction. I am especially interested in questions such as: Which environmental factors induce these transitions/migrations? Which endogenous factors control the transitions? Which genes are involved? Together with my post doc Rosa Figueroa and colleagues Dag Ahrén and Staffan Bensch we are attempting to identify the genes expressed during sexual reproduction.

My other research focus is on biogeography and genetic variations among populations of limnic protists, specifically dinoflagellates and raphidophytes. I'm interested in dispersal and colonization of aquatic protists, and the effect of isolation of populations in different lakes. Migratory birds may be important vectors for the dispersal of protists. Currently I am investigating local adaptation and genetic structure of populations of marine dinoflagellates that have become isolated in Antarctic saline lakes. In another project, my PhD student Karen Lebret is investigating the dispersal and invasion patterns of a bloom-forming protist belonging to the raphidophytes, with emphasis on population genetic structure