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I aim to investigate what factors are the most important in order to increase and maintain bird diversity when restoring and creating the wetlands, for example, wetland size or landscape setting. The largest part of my research focuses on wetland creation. I study created wetlands in Uppland, where I look at what environmental variables in created habitat are related to bird, fish, and amphibian diversity. More specifically, I look at what affects the bird community in created wetlands - their abundance, richness, and reproductive success and relate this to fish and amphibian communities. While bird data was collected using field observation, fish and amphibian occurrences were determined using environmental DNA metabarcoding sampling. I also try to relate species interactions and the intervention outcomes. Some of the possible interactions are a conspecific and heterospecific attraction, predation, and competition.
In other projects I am trying to evaluate wetland restorations for birds, where we try to narrow down the magnitude of wetland restorations in Sweden and quantify the species-specific responses. While the data set is rather heterogenous, we need to employ more creative data analysis tools in order to standardise the results.
______________________________________________________ Currently, I started a Post-Doc where I will continue investigating similar questions but in light of wetland multifunctionality.
I finished my PhD degree in 2021 with the tittle Wetland creation and restoration for biodiversity. Outcomes of conservation initiatives to benefit birds, amphibians and occasionally fish. On the other hand, my Master’s degree thesis at Lund University investigated the effects of urbanisation on the great tit’s cognition. I am also a bird enthusiast, and I have been working in the field with a project involving northern wheatears, and nest box populations of tits, and continually am involved in standardised bird ringing.
Knape, J., Paquet, M., Arlt, A., Kačergytė, I., Pärt, T. 2023. Partitioning variance in population growth for models with environmental and demographic stochasticity. Journal of Animal Ecology, 92, 1979–1991. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13990
Kačergytė, I., Knape, J., Żmihorski, M. Arlt, D., and Pärt, T. 2023.
Community associations of birds with amphibians and fish in wetlands created for biodiversity. Biological Conservation, 282, 110031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110031
Hambäck, P. A., Dawson, L., Geranmayeh, P., Jarsjö, J., Kačergytė, I., Peacock, M., ... & Blicharska, M. 2022. Tradeoffs and synergies in wetland multifunctionality: A scaling issue. Science of the Total Environment, 160746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.160746
Elofsson, K., Hiron, M., Kačergytė, I., & Pärt, T. 2023. Ecological compensation of stochastic wetland biodiversity: National or regional policy schemes? Ecological Economics, 204, 107672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107672
Kačergytė, I., Pärt, T., Berg, Å., Arlt, D., Żmihorski, M., & Knape, J. 2022. Quantifying effects of wetland restorations on bird communities in agricultural landscapes. Biological Conservation, 273, 109676. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109676
Kačergytė, I., Petersson, E., Arlt, D., Hellström, M., Knape, J., Spens, J., Żmihorski, M. and Pärt, T., 2021. Environmental DNA metabarcoding elucidates patterns of fish colonisation and co‐occurrences with amphibians in temperate wetlands created for biodiversity. Freshwater Biology, 2021;00:1–15 https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.13800
Kačergytė, I., Arlt, D., Berg, Å., Żmihorski, M., Knape, J., Rosin, Z. M., & Pärt, T. 2021. Evaluating created wetlands for bird diversity and reproductive success. Biological Conservation, Volume 257, 109084.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109084
Josefsson, J., Hiron, M., Arlt, D., Auffret, A.G., Berg, Å., Chevalier, M., Glimskär, A., Hartman, G., Kačergytė, I., Klein, J., Knape, J., et al. ... and Pärt, T. 2020. Improving scientific rigour in conservation evaluations and a plea deal for transparency on potential biases. Conservation Letters, p.e12726. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12726
Preprints:
Gould, E., Fraser, H. S., Parker, T. H., Nakagawa, S., Griffith, S. C., Vesk, P. A., ... Kačergytė, I.,... & Meiners, S. J. (2023). Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2GG62