Carl Gotthard Professor

I am course leader and teach at the second year ecology course (Ecology II). In addition I lecture at several other courses in Ecology, Evolution and Entomology.

My research concerns the evolutionary ecology of developmental plasticity and life history in insects, primarily butterflies. I am particularly interested in how the diapause decision affects life cycle regulation and how it evolves due to variation in local selction pressures. I also investigate how insect diapause and thermal adaptation affects spring phenology and interactions between butterflies and their host plants, and to what extent the diapause decision allows the evolution of partly independent developmental pathways. My group is also exploring the gentic background to adaptive variation in seasonal plasticity. We are studying this in several different butterfly species using a wide range of methods from field experiment to genomics.

My Research is funded by grants from The Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University and by the Swedish Research Council (VR).

Presently I am supervising three Ph.D students, Mats Ittonen, Anna Shoshan, and Isabelle Siemers. I also welcome master students and we always have many differnt projects to offer, including both field and lab work.

An updated list of my publications can be found here.

Previous PhD students:

Dr. David Berger, now running his own group at Uppsala University.

Dr. Inger Aalberg-Haugen, presently working at The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA).

Dr. Diana Posledovich, at the Swedish Chemicals Agency, Stockholm.

Dr. Peter Pruisscher, at the SciLifeLab Clinical Genomics, Stockholm 

Dr. Olle Lindestad, Post-doc at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences, Stockholm University in the group of Johan Ehrlén. Here is Olles University page

Previous Post-docs

Dr Richard Walters, presently at The University of Reading and and guest researcher at Lund University.

Dr. Sami Kivelä, presently a Finnish Academy Research Fellow at University of Oulo, Finland.

Dr. Phlipp Lehmann, running his at own group as Full Professor at University of Greifswald, Germany.

Dr. Matthew E. Nielsen, running his own group as Assistant Professor at the University of Bremen, Germany.