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I currently hold a position as Assistant Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at Alnarp, in combination with a position as coordinator for the research schools SENSYS – Sensory Systems and Periurban Development within the Ph.D. education at Campus Alnarp.
ResearchMy broad scientific interest is the evolution of olfactory and other sensory signals and the function of olfactory systems. In this context I study production and perception of olfactory signals, on different levels of evolution, genetics, sensory physiology, and behaviour.
My main research interest is the olfactory system of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, and other drosophilid flies: the function of their olfactory systems and how this relates to their odour worlds. By performing targeted modifications of their nervous systems, I study the function of specific components of the olfactory system.
Additionally I study the function of olfactory receptor neurons, and olfactory receptor proteins where available, of other insect species in a broader agenda to understand how insects adapt to different olfactory environments.
I have also initiated a program for pheromones and conservation biology: monitoring of threatened insects with pheromone traps, in combination with genetic markers to study their population structures in heterogeneous environments. As part of this project I have explored the odour world of a European red-listed scarab beetle living in old hollow trees, the hermit beetle Osmoderma eremita, in relation to its special habitat. Together with some colleagues I have identified its fruit-smelling pheromone and started to explore the possibility of using the pheromone for studying and monitoring of this large but shy and elusive beetle.
Previous historyMy Ph. D. thesis “Neural Interfaces to the Odour World of Scarab Beetles”, Lund University, 2001, dealt with the olfactory sense of phytophagous scarab beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae): how their olfactory receptor neurons detect different pheromones and plant odours and how this information is encoded in their antennal lobes (the primary olfactory centres of an insect brain).
After my dissertation I completed two postdoctoral fellowships:
Together with Nicholas J. Strausfeld at the University of Arizona, I studied the neuroanatomy of phytophagous scarabs, especially the organization of their mushroom bodies (higher processing and memory centres of the insect brain). I have continued to study the neuroanatomy and olfactory physiology of phytophagous scarab beetles, along with practically any other insect that comes my way.
Together with Leslie B. Vosshall at Rockefeller University, New York, I employed genetic tools to study the olfactory system of Drosophila, especially the function of the ubiquitous olfactory receptor Or83, which is co-expressed with ordinary olfactory receptors in most olfactory receptor neurons in insects. Through targeted gene knockouts by homologous recombination I created mutants for Or83b and demonstrated that this receptor is essential for membrane transport and normal function of other olfactory receptor proteins.
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