Tomas Pärt

I work mainly with questions concerning landscape effects on population and biodiversity dynamics. I also work with wetland creation, SLOSS strategies and their effects on biodiversity management. A third major path concerns a longterm study (30 yrs) of a population of northern wheatears in the farmland SE Uppsala, with high quality pedigree data on demography and habitat choice and long-term data on landuse changes. Using wheatears as a model species we start now to dig deep into the genomics of local adaptation and climate change in agricultural and mountain regions of Europe. We will also scrutinize the ecology and genomics behind maladaptive habitat choice such as ecological trap selection. The future will be exciting, stay tuned!

Some questions:

Landscape Ecology
How important is agricultural intensity for habitat-specific alpha, beta and gamma diversity in agricultural landscapes?
Which other factors drive spatial and temporal variation of biodiversity in the farmland?

Wetland creation and SLOSS strategies
To increase biodiversity (number of species and their abundance) in created wetlands, should one create several small or a few large, and does the best solution depend on the species ecological traits/ecological niche?

Local adaptation, genomic footprints and ecological traps 
Can natural populations living in farmlands cope with the fast environmental changes, which adaptive traits and genes are involved and do populations get evolutionary rescued to again match their new environments?
Are the genomic footprints of agricultural change different across populations in Europe depending on their history of landuse and climate change?
Can we identify candidate genes linked to local adaptation or maladaptation?