Candolin Research Lab

We investigate how organisms respond to the rapid environmental changes that we humans are causing. Much of the work is focused on behavioural responses, but recently we have extended our work to encompass also other phenotypic changes, such as morphological changes, and to link these to genetic changes.

Our research has two main focus areas: one that focusses on current responses of organisms to environmental change, and another that focusses on past responses.

A)    Projects on currents responses concentrate on behavioural responses to environmental change. This is because behavioural responses often represent the first response to changing conditions. They can either facilitate or hamper adaptation to rapid environmental changes, which in turn can have consequences for the abundance and distribution of populations.

B)    Projects on past responses use the information hidden in the sediments of aquatic ecosystems to determine how past zooplankton populations have responded to past environmental changes. Using resurrection ecology, paleolimnology and paleogenomics, we relate past phenotypic and genetic changes to documented environmental changes. This increases our knowledge of how organisms respond to altered conditions, which will help us predict the future.

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