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Research groups

Spider net like threads growing on brown cylinders. Photo.
Fungi mycelia growing on a substrate.

We do research in different research groups at the Department of Biology. A research group consists of a minimum of two primary investigators and preferably some post-docs and doctoral students, joined together by their joint research interest.

You find a more exhaustive description of our research groups in Lund University's research portal. In the same place, you also find all our scientific personnel and their contact information (Lund University's research portal).

In a sophisticated wind tunnel, we explore animal flight. Birds, bats, and insects are some of the animals we study there. Our research is primarily focused on the ecology and evolution of animal flight.

The research group Animal Flight Lab, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

We study how birds and other animals have adapted to migrate and navigate across long distances. We use a combination of field-based research, including individual tracking, and laboratory experiments where we can control the availability of cues and study physiological and behavioural responses in individuals.

The research group Animal Navigation Lab, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

Our research concerns the function of the body. We have a huge range of techniques and model organisms to our help. Everything from how single cells in culture respond to their substrate to the way whole organ systems develop and respond to environmental stress.

The research group Animal Physiology, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

The research group Aquatic Ecology studies, among other things, climate change effects on aquatic systems, regime shifts in shallow lakes, dispersal, and migration of aquatic organisms, population genetics, predator-prey interactions, effects of pesticides and endocrine disruptors and sustainable fisheries.

The research group Aquatic Ecology, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

The aim of the research group is to advance the scientific understanding of how human activities, such as habitat loss, habitat conversion, and climate change, affect biodiversity and how this feeds back on the generation of ecosystem services, like pollination or biological control.

The research group Biodiversity and Conservation Science, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

We use computational tools to ask big multi-disciplinary questions concerning identity, genotype-phenotype relationships, and evolution.

The research group Bioinformatics, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

Our research lies at the interface of development, ecology, and evolution. We use experimental and comparative methods, guided by mathematical modelling and conceptual analysis.

We are interested in various aspects of the genetics of sex differences, including sexual selection and sexual conflict, the evolution of sexual dimorphism, and sex chromosome evolution. We work in the interface between evolutionary ecology and genomics.

The research group Genetics of Sex Differences, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

This group studies physiological and ecological mechanisms affecting the balance between reproduction and survival. This involves both special adaptations and evolutionary constraints. Birds such as the blue tit invest in many offspring and have shorter lifespans, while the white-tailed eagle invests in a long lifespan and fewer offspring.

The research group Life History and Functional Ecology, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

The research projects of this group include the evolution of animal eyes and their optical mechanisms, colour vision and nocturnal vision in animals, navigation using polarised light and magnetic fields, and image enhancement in dim light.

The research group Lund Vision Group, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

We study how mammals obtain sensory information from their rhinaria and what role this information plays in their lives. In the strict sense of the word, the rhinarium is the hairless, often wet frontal part of the mammalian nose.

The research group Mammalian Rhinarium Group, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

We study terrestrial ecosystems to better understand how soil microorganisms regulate global biogeochemistry and predict responses to environmental changes.

We are a group of microbial ecologists, ecosystem ecologists, biogeochemists, and modellers, who have a shared vision, and under the umbrella of ‘Microbial Biogeochemistry in Lund’, combine empirical and modelling approaches to accomplish this.

The research group Microbial Biogeochemistry in Lund, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

The research group Microbial ecology works with identification of the microorganisms that carry out carbon and nitrogen turnover in soils, particularly forest soils. They characterise some of these processes at molecular levels and identify how they are regulated under different environmental scenarios. A major focus is on symbiotic interactions between fungi and roots of plants.

The research group Microbial Ecology, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

The research of this group is devoted to gram-positive bacteria. Their research areas include heme-containing proteins, endospore biogenesis, coiled-coil proteins in the bacterial cytoskeleton, the development and differentiation of Streptomyces, and bacterial stress responses.

The research group Microbiology Group, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

Our research is rooted in the fields of both behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology. Their study systems cover bacteria and parasites as well as insects, birds, and mammals. Common to all the research projects in the group is that they use molecular techniques to answer evolutionary and ecological questions.

The research group Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

Telomeres are necessary for the integrity of chromosomes. This group studies the function of telomeres and the basic molecular mechanisms of telomerase, the enzyme catalyzing the synthesis of telomeric DNA. The roles of telomeres in cancer and ageing are also considered.

The research group Molecular Genetics and Genetics, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

We study how chemical signals (olfaction and taste) are used by insects to find food, partner, or egg-laying site. We try to answer questions about how the signals work (morphology, physiology, behaviour, and ecology), how they have evolved (evolution and genetics), and how they can be used for practical purposes to suppress pest insects or census rare species.

The research group Pheromone Group, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

Plant research at the department focuses on evolutionary processes, distribution of plant populations in space and time, and interaction between plants and between plants and the environment. We investigate plant resistance against antimicrobial peptides released by benevolent fungi, plant redox involvement in stress defence, and protein quality control in the plant endoplasmic reticulum. Other research areas are phylogeny and taxonomy.

The research group Plant Biology, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research database.

The Soil Ecology Group's research is about interactions between soil organisms, the responses of soil organisms to the environment, the distribution of the organisms, and the impact of the environment on populations and communities' parameters (also anthropogenic ones).

The research group Soil Ecology, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

We explore the interface between ecology and evolution, using methods from evolutionary ecology, quantitative genetics, and phylogenetic comparative methods. We are quantitative biologists working in natural populations and are interested in linking micro- and macroevolution.

The research group Population Biology, Micro- and Macroevolution, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

We are interested in processes that generate biodiversity. In our research, we investigate the processes that have made plants and plant-feeding insects two of the most diverse and abundant groups of organisms on Earth.

The research group Speciation, Adaptation and Coevolution, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

The research group focuses on studying the diversification dynamics of life throughout evolutionary history. We use molecular phylogenetics to infer when, where, and how different groups of organisms diversified.

The research group Systematic Biology Group, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

The research group studies basic ecological and evolutionary questions such as speciation, dynamics, and evolution in ecological populations, behaviour and life history strategies, and adaptations to changing environments. The effect of climate change and the management of wildlife and marine fish stocks are important application areas.

The research group Theoretical Population Ecology and Evolution Group, its researchers, projects, and publications in Lund University's research portal.

Participation

We also take part in the following centres and schools outside the department. The links go to external websites.

Monitoring

Recent publications

The links below are to external websites