PhD students

Alexander Rosén

Title of the PhD project
Growth and metabolic scaling of fish: unravelling how variation in growth affects metabolic scaling

Supervisors
Tommy Norin and Ken Haste Andersen

Background of the project
Metabolic rate scales with body size, but usually out of proportion, meaning that for a given increase in body mass, metabolic rate usually increases less. This means that larger animals are more efficient, and 1 kg of mouse thus uses magnitudes more energy than 1 kg elephant. This scaling is not constant and there is substantial variation among taxa and taxonomic level. Precisely why it is so, and particularly why there is variation in this metabolic scaling relationship between individual, species and groups of species are some of the biggest unanswered questions in biology.

About the project
The goal of the project is to test a novel hypothesis that metabolic scaling is governed by growth and that variation in selection pressures on fast early-life growth courses the variation in metabolic scaling. This will be tested using both a multigenerational selection study where zebrafish will be breed for high or low growth rates and during a comparative study examining different fish species with varying levels of early growth rates. Metabolic rate will be measured with respirometry. 

Perspectives
This project is expected to produce new and fundamental knowledge about metabolic scaling and why it varies both in individuals, between individual, between species and species groups. These findings would translate into a better understanding of the energetics of animals and low evolution affects this. In addition, it can help predict how animals will be respond to new selection pressures such as climate change and overharvesting.

Previous PhD students within the research area Fish Biology
(since 2020)

Kasun Anuruddha Bandara
Marine larval hatchery technology: Microbial management and immune system ontogeny in European eel