I graduated from my master program in 2014 from Uppsala University. After graduating, I had two years off from academia and worked with forest inventory at the Swedish national forest inventory. Later I started to work with biologically valuable pastures and grasslands at the county administrative board in Gävle. In 2016 I was accepted as a PhD-student at SLU in Uppsala with Tomas Roslin and Ayco Tack as my supervisors.
In my PhD, I am studying spatial and temporal variation in a small subset of the oak insect community. The community consists of oak feeding leaf miners and gall wasps, and their greatest natural enemy – the parasitoid. I am especially interested to see how different temperatures affect the phenology of these insects, i.e. when they hatch in spring and how they hatch in relation to each other. Could it be that temperature shifts cause asynchrony between interacting species in the spring? Besides climate, I also aim to figure out how parasitoids are dispersing in the landscape. This information will allow me to make theoretical predictions of how top down forces are likely to vary in space, but also add valuable information of how insect food webs build up in space.
On my spare time I like to be active. I often go out for a run in the forest or cross-country skiing when snow is available. I also like to watch hockey, where I am a passionate fan of Leksands IF.
I completed my Bachelor’s degree at University of Washington in Seattle USA, where I focused primarily on plant physiology and ecology. There, I developed a strong interest in fungi and moved to Sweden to pursue a Master’s degree at Uppsala University with a focus on fungal conservation. I was supervised under Anders Dahlberg and Audrius Menkis at SLU for my degree project concerning the population genetics of the rare and endangered oak fungus Hapalopilus croceus. I then continued my work as a research assistant for three years, examining young and ancient oak fungal communities following veteranisation, and deciduous endophyte communities in Norway.
Currently I am working on a PhD at SLU under the supervision of Tomas Roslin, René Van Der Wal, and Mohammad Bahram that aims to examine climatic impacts on biological interactions central to plant productivity and its cascading effect throughout the arctic ecosystem. Specifically, my research focuses on how plants and their associated pollinators, fungi and bacteria are affected by arctic warming and whether accurate models can be constructed to predict consequential network changes. I am also very interested in the impact of changing ecological interaction networks on ecosystem functioning, and how it may help to shed light on rarity vs. commonness in species.
I find peace and comfort in nature and spend a lot of time outdoors, engaging in urban gardening, and tending to my plants. I hold an art degree and enjoy drawing, painting, and writing music. I am also considered by many to be a vegan pizza wizard.
I have a fascination for complex interactions and feedbacks and trying to figure out how elements within a system affect each other. My research to date has primarily focused on food webs, the network of who-eats-whom in an ecosystem. In my PhD I am exploring how we can use species traits – features such as body size or foraging mode – to predict which species will feed on each other (giving the structure of the food web) and the consequences for the population sizes of the interacting species (the dynamics of the food web). I’m approaching these questions using a mixture of empirical and theoretical techniques, including field data, greenhouse experiments and computer simulations and developing methods to analyze the data. In my masters (at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand with Daniel Stouffer) I looked at how species’ network traits – such as trophic level or number of interactions – and food-web structure affected the stability of the food web.
Outside of work I like to be outside! Preferably in the mountains running, hiking, or climbing.
I successfully carried out a four-year bachelor degree in Biology at the University of Alcalá (Spain). Throughout those years, I developed a great interest in ecology and therefore I decided to move to Norway to continue my academic training where I carried out a two-year master’s degree in Applied Ecology at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. Short after that, I have worked as a research assistant within the EcoGeography group with Alberto Jimenez-Valverde, aiming to understand how the environment determines the distribution and abundance of species. Recently I was accepted as a PhD student at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) under the supervision of Tomas Roslin within the Spatial Foodweb Ecology Group.
The current goal of my PhD is to investigate microclimatic impacts on Arctic Arthropod Biodiversity. With this research, I aim to characterize microclimatic conditions along arctic landscapes in order to understand how the most species-rich parts of Arctic biodiversity (arthropods) are shaped by current microclimate conditions but also by biotic factors, species traits and phylogenetic relationships. Studying this relationship, I also intend to establish the consequences of climate change on biodiversity patterns and species distributions. Besides, I am also interested in new modelling methodologies that helps us understand why species are distributed the way they are and how this reflects into community-level characteristics.
I like to enjoy nature especially when doing outdoor activities such as hiking, cross-country skiing, any form of food provisioning (fishing, mushroom and berry picking…), bird watching or nature photography. I am also interested in insects in general and specially fascinated by the diversity of forms/size/colours of the Carabus sp. genus. I like indoor activities such as bouldering/climbing, table tennis (only known as ping-pong by really bad players) and any team sport.
My background is in ethology (animal behaviour) and conservation biology, with a master’s degree from Uppsala University. I did my master thesis at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), where I studied herbivore micro habitat choice in South Africa. For the last few years I have worked as a field technician on research projects focusing on biodiversity and conservation in Canada.
At SLU in Uppsala I work as a research assistant on a biodiversity project called LIFEPLAN. There I work with data collection, sample processing, and logistics.
I spend a lot of my free time outdoors where I like to hike, ski, and explore nature reserves/national parks.
Kirsten Miller (Post Doc)
Eero Vesterinen (Post Doc)