Annika Felton

My current research involves both ungulates and primates.

Ungulate ecology

Research into animal-plant interactions often provides insights of direct relevance to society. This is certainly the case in Sweden where large herbivores heavily influence the management and function of our forest ecosystems.  My ongoing research projects in ungulate ecology are (you find more detailed information about these projects on my Swedish CV page):        

• Relationships between ungulate densities, their forage and damage in the production forest (project Foodscape & Damage)
• The puzzle of forestry and ungulate interactions – a missing piece is in the understory (project ERICA)
• Beyond Moose: ecological interactions in Sweden’s diverse ungulate
  communities and their future management
• Nutritional balancing of the Nordic cervids, together with Dr Robert Spitzer, SLU
• Silvilculture of oak and other broadleaf tree species, together with PhD students Nora Sophie Pohl and Benjamin Miles
  
   

Research projects recently finalized:

• Development of a national monitoring scheme of ungulate-caused bark damage to Norway spruce, together with the Swedish Forest Agency
• Effects of supplementary feeding on moose health and forest damage in southern Sweden (project SUPPER)
• Interactive effects of agriculture and forestry on red deer damage in the landscape
• Understanding the nutritional drivers of moose health and impacts in the landscape
• The effect of different types of spruce stand cleaning measures on the creation of ungulate browse
• Cost of red deer damage in spruce stand in southern Sweden
• Effect of browsing and fire on the natural regeneration of oak

Other examples of my work in ungulate ecology includes feeding experiments with captive moose to identify their nutritional goal and priorities; field experiments that assess how different types of supplementary feeds influence the movements and subsequent browsing behaviour by wild ungulates; laboratory analyses of the nutritional contents of moose’ natural food items, as well as agricultural crops used in fodder fields and supplementary feeding of wild game; digestion trials using moose rumen liquid to better understand the nutritional value of different foods to moose.

Primate ecology

My PhD work on spider monkeys in Bolivia (see Background) has led to continued involvement in the field of primate ecology and conservation. I am involved in a book project as a co-author. The book is called "Primate Diet and Nutrition: Needing, Finding and Using Food", edited by Joanna Lambert and Jessica Rothman. I have written review articles about primate nutritional ecology and associated scientific approaches. I am frequently reviewing articles and grant applications about primate ecology and nutrition, as well as tropical forest ecology at large.

I am an assistant course leader for a third year course in forest conservation biology as part of the international BSc program Forests & Landscapes. I regularly provide lectures in three master-level courses given at the Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre (the Euroforester program); participate as a teacher in the course Forest Conservation Biology which is part of the MSc program Forest Management for Multiple Goals; and also teach for the course Sverigeresan, which is part of the Forest Science Program.

My teaching also involves the public and stakeholders. For example, I participated in the communication project Vild & Bortskämd, a large collaborative initiative which aimed to spread knowledge about how to create natually growing forage for wild ungulates in order to minimize damage and conflict. In this project we, for example, produced films and had workshops and excursions with stakeholders. Furthermore, together with my colleague Martin Ahlström I have created and held a one-day course called "Skog och Vilt i Balans", for employees in Swedish forestry industry; five course events Feb – Mar 2018 in southern Sweden (130 participants in total). Funded by Landsbygdsprogrammet (EU-funding). 

• Access to laboratory at SLU where we conduct a diverse array of analyses of nutritional composition of plant and other biological samples.
• Access to near-infra red spectroscopy/ hyperspectral imaging and expertise in related modelling.
• In-house lab space for sample preparation and drying.
• Access to laboratory at SLU and elsewhere where we conduct DNA extraction, PCR and DNA metabarcoding of biological samples.
• At our department you find expertise in multiple disciplines: ecology, forestry, management, pathology and forest planning. I further collaborate closely with veterinarians and social scientists that are based at other departments at SLU or other universities.
• An extensive network of hundreds of hunters in >50 moose management units (älgskötselområden) in southern Sweden, with experience in collecting samples for research.
• Established channels for outreach of research results to stakeholders, which include forest owners, hunters, management groups and government agencies.

I am the principal supervisor of PhD student Lukas Graf (project Foodscape and Damage), and was the principal supervisor for Laura Juvany Canovas (project ERICA) who finished in 2023. I co-supervise Nora Sophie Pohl (oak management and ecology) and Benjamin Miles (project BROADEN). I co-supervised PhD student Anna Widén (project Beyond Moose), Linda Petersson ("Promoting natural regeneration of oak by manipulating disturbance") and Robert Spitzer ("Trophic resource use and partitioning in multispecies ungulate communities"). I also continuously supervise MSc students at the Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre.

My publications can be found here

I finalized my PhD research in July 2008. That project was highly field intensive and involved reduced-impact logging in Bolivia, in relation to spider monkey (Ateles chamek) nutritional ecology and conservation. The candidacy was based at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra. The project, for which the field work took place in a certified forestry concession, assessed the importance of timber tree species to spider monkeys in terms of diet and ecology, and the capacity of RIL to maintain a suitable habitat for seed dispersers such as spider monkeys. During this period I developed a special interest in the analysis of complex multidimensional nutritional data, which I have great use of in my current work on moose in Sweden. After the thesis was finalized, I worked as a post-doc at the Fenner School for three months until the birth of my second child. This post-doc involved writing publications about sustainable resource use in managed forests.

I conducted my BSc in Ecology and Conservation Biology through Uppsala University, Sweden (1994-2000). My MSc project assessed orangutan population density, forest structure and fruit availability in hand-logged and unlogged peat swamp forests in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. I have also gained research experience participating in projects in different parts of the world, e.g: population biology of sea-turtles, Great Barrier Reef, Australia; behavioral ecology of barnacle geese on Gotland, Sweden; river otter population survey, Sweden; botanical research in Brunei Darussalaam; landscape ecology research on peccaries and jaguars in Madidi National Park, Bolivia. The latter project was organized by Wildlife Conservation Society, and during this time I co-discovered a species of titi-monkey previously unknown to science. I was also part of the WCS team that raised US$650 000 for Madidi National Park by auctioning the naming rights of this new species (Callicebus aureipalatii).