Felix Eissenhauer, a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick, will be giving a seminar entitled “Ecology of the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) in a large tidal and hydropower-regulated river” over Zoom  https://kau-se.zoom.us/j/65816884688 at 13:15 CET on December 5, 2023.

Felix’s work focuses on the ecology of the American eel in the Wolastoq River, a large tidal and hydropower-regulated river in Canada. He is studying how a hydropower dam affects the recruitment of eel elvers and using mark-recapture methods to assess their population size and demographics. Further, Felix uses acoustic telemetry to study the depth and thermal habitat use and the seasonal migration behaviour of yellow eels in the Wolastoq River.

You are welcome to join this seminar

Jeffery Marker, a final-year doctoral student at the Department of Environmental and Life Sciences, Biology, will have his disputation on Friday, December 8, 2023, at 10 a.m. CET at the Karlstad University campus, Building 21, Room A342. You are welcome to join.

Stephen’s research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of natural selection, specifically in sexually reproducing populations. In this seminar, he will argue the following points: sexual dimorphism, or within species differences between the sexes, are a pervasive form of biodiversity, often with ecological importance. He will then present a series of experiments from salamanders and flies that test for a role of direct ecological causes of sexual dimorphism – that is, ecological character displacement between the sexes. He will then go on to explore the theoretical and realized consequences of sexual dimorphism for the assembly of ecological communities. 

Tuesday 31 October 2023, kl. 13.15 Room 5F322 (https://kau-se.zoom.us/j/3552606964). You are welcome!

Lutz Eckstein is co-author of a paper presenting a workflow for iPhenology (Fig. 1), i.e., the use of publicly available photo observations to track phenological events at large scales. The paper, which has recently been published open access in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution (https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14114), is led by Yves Klinger (Justus-von-Liebig University Gießen, Germany), who will be visiting Biology at KaU in June 2023. Overall, publicly available citizen science photo observations are suitable to track key phenological events and can thus significantly advance the knowledge on the timing and drivers of plant phenology. In future, integrating the workflow with automated image processing and analysis may enable real-time tracking of plant phenology. To learn more about what sparked the idea for this paper and what may be advantages of working with citizen science photos, see the Methods in Ecology and Evolution blog (https://methodsblog.com/2023/05/22/using-citizen-science-photos-to-perform-phenological-studies/).

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Jason Lee Anders, a Postdoc researcher from CEES, Oslo will be giving a seminar entitled “Effects of dietary shift and intestinal helminths on the gut microbiota of two sympatric rodents in urban environments“. Cities are among the most extreme forms of anthropogenic ecosystem modification and urbanization processes that exert profound effects on animal populations through multiple ecological pathways. Understanding how urbanization alters the gut microbiome of wildlife is essential as it plays a pivotal role in health and development. The focus of this project is to understand how the gut microbiota of two sympatric species of rodents, the omnivorous large Japanese field mouse (Apodemus speciosus) and the relatively more herbivorous grey red-backed vole (Myodes rufocanus), is altered within urban ecosystems and what factors may be affecting those changes. Both species exhibited an expanded dietary niche width within the urban areas potentially attributable to novel anthropogenic foods and altered resource availability. We detected a dietary shift in which urban A. speciosus consumed more terrestrial animal protein and M. rufocanus more plant leaves and stems. These changes in resource use may be associated with an altered gut microbial community structure such as an increased abundance of the presumably probiotic Lactobacillus in the small intestine of urban A. speciosus. While urbanization negatively impacted several intestinal helminth species (i.e. lower prevalence and abundance), the cosmopolitan nematode Heterakis spumosa may be important for maintaining high gut microbial alpha diversity. Furthermore, it may promote lower relative abundance of the potentially pathogenic Helicobacter in the lower gastrointestinal tract of urban M. rufocanus. Together, these results suggest that even taxonomically similar species may exhibit divergent responses to urbanization with consequences for the gut microbiota and broader ecological interactions.

Jason’s seminar will be streamed live on zoom through https://kau-se.zoom.us/my/kaubiology on Tuesday 24 May at 13.15 CEST.

Two current members of NRRV, Larry Greenberg and Eva Bergman, and two former members, Johnny Norrgård and Pär Gustafsson, have recently published an overview of 15 years of research on the endemic, large-bodied population of landlocked River Klarälven-Lake Vänern population of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).

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They highlight the major findings from studies of each of the salmon’s life stages and conclude that the Klarälven salmon population is below carrying capacity. Greenberg et al. (2021) suggest measures to increase the number of spawners and downstream passage success, and they also recommend habitat restoration to compensate for losses from, for example, former log-driving activities. They also discuss the ecological and legislative problems that need to be addressed if one wishes to re-establish salmon in Klarälven’s upper reaches in Norway. Managing, conserving and conducting research on this migratory salmonid population has been challenging not only because of the ecosystems’ large size, but also because there is more than one anthropomorphic stressor involved.

Read more about the paper here: https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/cjfas-2020-0163

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On Tuesday October 9, two seminars will be held at the biology department at Karlstad University.

Adaptive potential and evolutionary responses to climate change: Arctic char and threespine stickleback in Greenland – Michael Hansen, Professor, Aarhus University

Ecological genetics – What’s it about and how can we use it? – Karl Filipsson, NRRV PhD-student, Karlstad University

The seminars will be held in room 5F416 and start at 13:15. Everyone who wants to are welcome to attend the seminars.

Study ecology and conservation at Karlstad University. The master program “Ecology and Conservation Biology” is now open for applications. Read more about the program here, and related articles on NRRV.se here (Swedish and English). For questions, contact John Piccolo. Apply before April 15!