Main reserach interests

My work mainly revolves around two main general research topics: 1) linking food webs to ecosystem functioning and stability 2) studying how ecological networks vary across time and space in response to environmental changes and perturbations, particularly those driven by climate warming.

My research primarily focuses on marine, coastal, and offshore systems, including the Barents Sea, Baltic Sea, North Sea, and the Atlantic and Antarctic Oceans. Additionally, I have experience studying terrestrial plant-pollinator networks.

Current research projects

Heatwave-driven rewiring of coastal food webs

Extreme events such as heatwaves are an increasingly common feature of climate change, driving major ecological disruptions worldwide. Heatwaves can push species beyond their tolerance limits, leading to species loss, consumer dietary shifts, and loss and rewiring of interactions in the food web. These changes may decrease ecosystem productivity and gradually deteriorate the stability of ecological communities as the magnitude and frequency of heatwaves increases. Forecasting and managing the impact of heatwaves calls for urgent improvement in our understanding of how they threaten our ecosystems. This project will predict the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of coastal ecosystems to heatwaves, using the Baltic Sea as a case study system, by combining state-of-the-art experiments with DNA analysis and food web modelling. The gained insights from the project will be important for managing and safeguarding our valuable coastal resources.

Carbon cycling in coastal Baltic Sea food webs

Trophic interactions inter-link the ecosystem from the bottom to the top and are central for the flow of carbon, and therefore food webs are central for understanding the fate of carbon in the ecosystem. This is important because coastal ecosystems can function as carbon sinks, mitigating climate change effects, but they are faced with multiple threats such as rising temperatures, eutrophication, invasive species, and degradation of foundation species (macrophytes, mussels). These pressures may disrupt species interactions and ecosystem functioning. In this project, the objective is to investigate the carbon dynamics within the food webs of key coastal habitats: macroalgae (Fucus), seagrass, blue mussel, and bare sediment.

Effects of marine heatwaves on coastal marine food web structure and functioning

Together with a research group from Åbo Akademi University, Lucinda Kraufvelin, Christian Pansch and Marie Nordström, I am analysing community data from mesocosm experiments which have been exposed to marine heatwaves. In this projet, we aim to gain a better understanding of how coastal Baltic Sea food webs may restructure (or rewire), when exposed to heatwaves, and how this restructering influences ecosystem functioning in terms changes in energy fluxes. To link food web structure to ecosystem functioning in these mesocosm communties we are using bioenergetic food web modeling. The analyses will be part of Lucinda's PhD thesis. Methods: PDF.

The Gulf of Riga food web: a case study system

Together with Patrick Ståhl (PhD stud.) and Marie Nordstöm at ÅAU, I am investigating the relationship between network robustness and unweighted and weighted properties in a temporal food web time series in the Gulf of Riga (GoR)- a case study system for which we have unique long-term food web data, click here . The analyses will be part of Patrick's PhD thesis. I am also investigating the relative importance of biotic and abotic variables for structering the GoR food web using structural equation modeling. The GoR food web has also been used as a case study system in other projects together with one of my collaboraters Dr. Lai Zhang from Yangzhou University in China. In these projects the GoR food web was used to better understand the relationship between food web structure and function variability, and the role of generality (number of resource items) in shaping food web robustness. Output from this collaboration was recently featured in a `research highlights´ arcticle in Journal of Animal Ecology, click here

Effects of landscape structure and pollinator specialisation on pollination

In a past postdoctoral project at the University of Helsinki (2020-2022), I studied how landscape configurations and network structure (pollinator traits) interact to influence plant-pollinator encounter rates with consequences for the pollination process, using an individual-based modeling approach. This work was done in collaboration with colleagues from Helsinki University (Tomas Roslin, Alyssa Cirtwill and Giovanni Strona ). Outside of HU, Tom Timberlake , Memmott, Liam Kendall and Dr. Leonardo Saravia contributed to the work.

Food web variability along environmental gradients from the Atlantic to the Antarctic

I am currently involved in an international food web project with Argentinian colleagues Dr. Leonardo Saravia and Dr. Tomas Marina from Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas. The projects aims at assessing the anthropogenic effects and environmental variability in food web structure along a latitudinal gradient from the Atlantic to Southwest-Antarctic.