Long way from Vancouver to Stockholm

John Fitzpatrick. Photo: Magnus Bergström/Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

John Fitzpatrick was born in Vancouver and came to Stockholm University in October 2015. He was then employed at the Department of Zoology as an assistant professor of ethology. But the road from Canada to Sweden was certainly not straight. After graduating from Vancouver in western Canada, John defended his dissertation in the city of Hamilton in the eastern part of the country.

Then it was off to Perth in southwestern Australia for a postdoctoral period that lasted five years. Followed by almost three years in Manchester, England, now as a lecturer. He also spent time doing field work in Africa and Trinidad. The Swedish wife Maria, also an ethologist, has made almost the same journey, but with Stockholm as a starting point instead of Vancouver. In the end, both landed in Stockholm and here is where they want to stay.

Interesting reproductive behaviors in fish

The common thread of the long journey is, of course, research. Already during his studies, John became fascinated by how different behaviors in animals have developed. He is now studying sexual selection and the evolution of traits and behaviors associated with reproduction. Some of the areas he is interested in are competition between males before and after mating, females' choice of partner, the development of so-called sexual weapons and how sexual behavior is affected by reduced genetic diversity in small and isolated populations.

The research is conducted both in the field and in the lab and includes both controlled experiments and comparative phylogenetic analyses. What he studies is not only behaviors but also anatomical properties of, for example, genitals and sperm. As a study object, John has chosen fish such as trout, cichlids and guppies, but also significantly larger animals; his students have sometimes combed fish markets around the world to collect sharks and rays to study their anatomy.

Halfbeak. Foto: Charel Reuland.

The advantage of half-beaks

To be able to do experiments on fish, however, smaller and more manageable animals are needed and John has stuck to a type of fish that is probably appreciated by aquarists, namely half-beaks. They occur naturally in Malaysian and Indonesian waters but are easy to breed in aquariums. The name means that the lower jaw is significantly longer than the upper jaw, which gives the fish a very special look. With a size of only 7 cm and provided with strong signal colors and bizarre genitals, they are ideal study objects. A special aquarium section for John's experiments with half-beaks has been built in the E-building.

When John came to the university, his research group was modest, but soon a postdoc joined to work with the half-beaks. John also has a doctoral student from the time in Manchester left in England. On his website, he welcomes both new doctoral students and degree workers, so the group will probably grow larger soon. In addition, John sees great opportunities to collaborate with others within the Department of Zoology.

Used to teaching

John taught a lot in Manchester, which was lucky because when he came to Stockholm he was thrown into teaching almost immediately due to a sudden vacancy on the course Ethology II. It was a week of partially improvised teaching on phylogenetic perspectives. John describes his teaching philosophy as wanting to train students in solving problems on their own. The teacher's role will then mainly be to provide a conceptual framework.

Hobbies? Well, there is not much time left for such - it takes time to build life in a new country. Of course, the little daughter of three years also fills a large part of John's free time.