Research interests

My research is focused on community ecology in spatially subdivided habitats, and on the linkages between population and ecosystem ecology. I have been studying the dynamics and species interactions in Daphnia metapopulations in rockpools since the early 1980-ies. More recently, I have used soil organisms to study how food web structure influences ecosystem processes, both in theory and in an applied context. This has led to an interest in the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning, and management of landscapes for biodiversity conservation. I am also interested in the long term dynamics of communities, and thanks to my eminent students Anki and Örjan I am also involved in studies of diversity and ecosystem services (mainly biological control) in agricultural landscapes.

I am also interested in music. Please listen to my Monday and Saturday

Publications

Selected publications

Bengtsson, J., Baillie, S.A. & Lawton, J. 1997. Community variability increases over time. Oikos 78: 249-256

Bengtsson, J. & Ebert, D. 1998. Distributions and impacts of microparasites on Daphnia in rockpool metapopulations. Oecologia 115: 213-221

Bengtsson, J. 1998. Which species? What kind of diversity? Which ecosystem function? Some problems in studies of relations between biodiversity and ecosystem function. Applied Soil Ecology 10: 191-199.

Bengtsson, J., Nilsson, S-G., Franc, A. & Menozzi, P. 2000. Biodiversity, disturbances, ecosystem processes and sustainability of European forests. Forest Ecology and Management 132: 39-50

Loreau, M., Naeem, S., Inchausti, P., Bengtsson, J., Grime, J.P., Hector, A., Hooper, D.U., Huston, M.A., Raffaelli, D., Schmid, B., Tilman, D. & Wardle, D.A. 2001. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning: Current Knowledge and Future Challenges. Science 294: 804-808.

Bengtsson, J. 2002. Disturbance and resilience in soil organism communities. European Journal of Soil Biology 38: 119-125.

Bengtsson, J., Angelstam, P., Elmqvist, T., Emanuelsson, U., Folke, C., Ihse, M., Moberg, F. & Nyström, M. 2003. Reserves, resilience and dynamic landscapes. Ambio 32(6), 389-396.

Östman. Ö., Ekbom, B., Bengtsson, J. 2003. Yield increase attributable to aphid predation by ground-living polyphagous natural enemies in spring barley in Sweden. Ecological Economics 45, 149-158.

Thomas Elmqvist, Carl Folke, Magnus Nyström, Garry Peterson, Jan Bengtsson, Brian Walker, and Jon Norberg. 2003. Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience. Front Ecol Environ 2003; 1(9): 488–494

Lindberg, N. & Bengtsson, J. 2005. Population responses of oribatid mites and collembolans after drought. Applied soil ecology 28, 163-174.

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