CAnMove

Research

Current research projects where we address dispersal of soil organisms both on a local scale but also on a long range scale
- Diversity in agricultural landscapes depends largely to the conservation of small landscape elements that as habitats to plant and animal communities contributes to the diversity in the landscape. In a trans-disciplinary project ecological modelling and ecological aspects are assessed to evaluate the effect of landscape structure on the biodiversity of plants, pollinators and natural enemies of agricultural pests. We focus on the ecosystem services provided by predatory insects and spiders. Managing sustainable levels of natural predators in the agricultural landscape is a task that has grown in interest both as a task for regulating pest insects but also in increasing the biodiversity in these landscapes. Movements of insects and spiders are key features that we study to be able to predict the assurance of ecosystem services in agriculture.

Colonisation and dispersal of Arctic invertebrates - This project is a part of a 4 year collaboration between Lund university and the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, in which the PhD student Maria Ingimarsdottir studies the invertebrate diversity and succession on nunataks on Iceland, as glaciers on Iceland are retreating due to global warming. We are focussing on the processes that determine the diversity of these communities, that are presently completely unknown, but recent theories on metacommunity dynamics can be used to predict local and regional patterns of diversity. Field work on Iceland has started now in June 2008.

The project “Dispersal and geneflow of soil animals” deals with long range and short range dispersal of soil insects over the Arctic. At long range dispersal, the colonisation after the last glaciation has be studied with genetic markers of collembolans and routes of colonisation can be predicted.