Prof Erik Svensson
Principal Investigator
Contact
Email: Erik Svensson
Phone: +46 46 222 38 19
Biosketch
Erik Svensson is Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. His research has four main themes: (1) Phenotypic evolution; particularly natural and sexual selection in the wild, (2) evolutionary dynamics, ecology, behaviour and genetic architecture of phenotypic polymorphisms, such as colour polymorphisms, (3) the ecology and evolution of color signaling and how natural and sexual selection operates on animal colouration, and (4) the evolution of phenotypic plasticity, particularly thermal plasticity and learning. Svensson's research group explores these four themes using a variety of different analytical and experimental approaches. Methods include field and laboratory experiments, evolutionary quantitative genetics, measurements of selection in the wild and molecular, and genomic and transcriptomic tools such as Next-generation DNA and RNA-sequencing. They are increasingly using phylogenetic comparative methods as well as developing theory and using modelling tools. The group is theory-oriented and their research aims to answer basic and fundamental questions in ecology, evolution and behavior. However, they rely on their strong tradition of field experimentation in natural populations. The group's main research organisms are odonates (dragonflies and damselflies), although they do also work with and have performed research on other organisms, including birds (passerines, ostriches), crustaceans (freshwater isopods), fruitflies (Drosophila melanogaster) and reptiles (lizards).