Congratulations Maren!

Some weeks ago the Faculty Newsletter highlighted that Maren Wellenreuther was granted a prize from the Konung Carl XVI Gustafs 50-årsfond för vetenskap, teknik och miljö. Congratulations Maren! Read her account of the award ceremony at the Royal palace in Stockolm:
 

When the Swedish King Karl Gustaf turned 50 years he created the ‘Konung Carl XVI Gustafs 50-årsfond för vetenskap, teknik och miljö’. The Foundations purpose is to promote research, technological development and entrepreneurship, which contribute to the sustainable use of natural resources and biodiversity conservation. Every year since then, between 15-20 young scientists receive this award for their scientific accomplishments and are invited to meet the King at his Royal Palace in Stockholm. I was one of the 16 receivers of the award in 2013 and travelled to Stockholm on the 27^th of May to receive my award certificate, money and to shake the hands of the King. We were all greeted by the secretary of the foundation, were seated alphabetically and then got a short lecture about etiquette. We learned to address the King as ‘your majesty’ or ‘your excellence’ and to not turn our backs to the king.

Then the king arrived and we all stood up to greet him. The secretary called our name alphabetical order, and read out a summary of our scientific achievements and how much money was awarded to us. We had to stand up during the 3-4 minutes that it took for the secretary to give all the details. 

 

The 16 receivers of the 2013 award are seated alphabetically in the front row.

Once all awardees were introduced, the king addresses us and said (among other things): "Ni jobbar med viktiga frågor som kan göra skillnad i framtiden. Stipendiet är en uppmuntran att fortsätta ert fantastiska arbete." 

 

Me and Karl, at the Bernadotte Library at the Royal Palace.

As scientists, it is not every day that our science is honoured in a special way, and so it was nice to feel special for once. Then we got to shake the hand of the King and received our certificate and cheque.

Once we had all received our awards, the royal guest professor Nancy Langston from Wisconsin, who spent the last 9 month at Umeå University, gave a guest lecture entitled "Toxic fish - a history". Professor Nancy Langston is a leader in the international emerging field of environmental history. Afterwards, we all got to mingle with a glass of champagne which gave us the opportunity to get to know the other awardees. 

I took the train back home after the ceremony and felt exhausted but happy. I am glad I went to Stockholm and got to experience this.

//Maren

Welcome new CAnMove PIs!

From 1 July 2013 we have recruited three new PIs in CAnMove, Ben Chapman, Bengt Hansson and Maren Wellenreuther, all based at the Department of Biology. Their research interests are related to e.g. movement ecology, dispersal, partial migration, risk of inbreeding, range expansion and speciation.

We welcome the three successful junior scientists to CAnMove and look forward to interactions and research progress within the coming years!

//Susanne and CAnMove Steering committee

CAnMove researcher in Sydsvenskan

For those who missed it - CAnMove PI Rachel Muheim and her resarch on animals' magnetic compasses were presented in Sydsvenskan this weekend!

Birds often migrate faster in spring than in autumn

The question whether birds might migrate faster in spring than in autumn has been debated for decades, and recently CAnMove researchers Cecilia Nilsson, Raymond Klaassen and Thomas Alerstam decided to use the rapidly increasing number of studies that track migrating birds to test this. 

And their study, published in the American Naturalist, do show a clear dominance of cases where spring migration is faster than autumn migration, in flight speed, stopover duration as well as total migration speed - suggesting that  spring and autumn migrations often constitute quite different evolutionary processes, involving different main selection pressures and adaptive solutions during the two seasons. For the future, first author Cecilia Nilsson hopes that this summary will open up the question of differences between spring and autumn migration and inspire critical tests of what determines migration speed.

Read the article here! (University log-in) or go to the American Naturalist.

Thanks and welcome!

Dr. Holk Cruse

We are very happy to welcome a new member to the CAnMove Science Advisory Board Dr. Holk Cruse at Bielefeld University and at the same time we wish to express our sincere gratitude to Prof. Rüdiger Wehner at Zürich University, who served in this board during the initial period of the CAnMove program. We are grateful to Prof. Rüdiger Wehner for important input and suggestions to research priorities and organisation of CAnmove and look forward to future interactions.
Dr. Holk Cruse in his research investigates how brains control behavior and in particular how brains control complex movements. Holk has studied the neuronal control of walking in multi-legged animals, insects and crustaceans. He is using a combination of behavioural studies including walking on various substrates and simulation studies on the basis of artificial neural networks. We are looking forward to future interactions with Dr Holk Cruse within the CAnMove program.
Read more about Dr. Holk Cruse

Susanne and CAnMove Steering committee

CAnMove conference at Bjärsjölagårds slott!

Two enthusiastic participants - Mikkel Brydegaard and Giuseppe Bianco.

Last week, CAnMove organized the third conference since the programme start in 2008, and the coordinator Susanne Åkesson, was delighted by the great response:
 - The meeting was very stimulating and demonstrated the great progress CAnMove scientists make in various fields, including e.g. nano-tracking of daphnia, optical insect and bird tracing, predicting bird distributions as climate change, and understanding aerodynamic theory for free-flying birds.

More than 40 CAnMovians joined the 1, 5-day-conference at Bjärsjölagårds slott, including the two science advisory board members Kerstin Johannesson and Christer Wiklund.

 No less than 11 interesting research presentations (Bengt Hansson to the left and Emily O'Connor above) and an overview of the latest advances of the CAnMove technical lab, were given during the conference. 





Throughout the conference we were blessed with good weather, and it was even possible to sit outside during breaks and discussions!

Christer Brönmark & Johan Bäckman

Sissel Sjöberg & Cecilia Nilsson

The old limstone quarry (close to the castle) with fossils dating from the Silurian period, attracted some enthusastic fossil hunters during one of the breaks.

Some seemed to enjoy the sun... (Christina Rengefors & Helena Westerdahl)

...while others were more focused on digging fossils. (Jonas Håkansson)

Anders Hedenström ended the first day with a summary of the programme's research progress after the 5 first years, and then all participated in discussions about how to advance CAnMove research the following 5 years. The PhD-group contributed with some valuable and viable ideas of how to make the PhDs more involved in the programme - some ideas which most likely will be picked up as we go ahead.

For those who were intresested, the staff arranged a tour of the castle (the castle dates back to the end of the 1500 century) on which no less than eight different ghosts were introduced!

Marco Klein Heerenbrink & Jonas Håkansson

As I forgot my camera, there are no pictures from the dinner and the subsequent lounge discussions, but they were nice!

The second day offered more research presentations along with a poster session. The conference ended after lunch, and then the bus headed back to Lund again!

Kerstin and Christer and parts of the PI-group stayed for a short afternoon meeting and more important feedback were given by the visiting SAB-members.

Thanks to everybody who participated and contributed!

New CAnMove co-workers

Last week two new members of the CAnMove family started their work. We are happy to welcome Mats Svensson and Christina Rengefors into the programme! Mats will be working full-time with database development and Christina will work 40% as a project assistant, together with Helena Osvath who also works 40%. Those of you who are coming to the CAnMove conference next week will get a chance to meet them there, other days they can be found in their offices on the third floor.