Secondary metabolites play a major role in mediating ecological interactions between organisms and are used to find food, habitats and mates as well as to compete and protect themselves against predators and pathogens. I am mainly interested in how benthic macroalgae (seaweeds) use chemicals for defence against different kind of threats, such as herbivores, biofouling organisms and pathogens.
The rapid change in the global environment we are experience today is imposing novel types of selection pressure on species, forcing them either to extinction or to adapt and evolve. It is important to investigate and understand how these changes will affect marine ecosystems and species, and ultimately to predict whether species and ecosystems will survive this rapid environmental change. This project aims to study phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation in the brown alga Fucus vesiculosus in relation to interaction with herbivores, by using the Skagerrak-Baltic salinity gradient as a model system. The recent and dramatic history of the Baltic Sea makes it an ideal natural test-bed for studying adaptation of populations and species over a temporal and spatial scale similar to those of current environmental changes. The project is carried out within The Centre for Marine Evolutionary Biology (CeMEB).
Sofia Raikova, Joakim Olsson, Joshua J. Mayers, Göran M. Nylund, Eva Albers et al.
N. Skoglund, K. Werner, Göran M. Nylund, Henrik Pavia, E. Albers et al.
J. S. Pechsiri, J. B. E. Thomas, E. Risén, M. S. Ribeiro, M. E. Malmström et al.
Jenny Veide Vilg, Göran M. Nylund, Tony Werner, Linnea Qvirist, Joshua Mayers et al.