Current projects

EELIAD - European Eels in the Atlantic: Assessment of their Decline

Multidisciplinary international project aimed at estimating the decline of European eel and the factors causing the decline (coordinated by David Righton, CEFAS, UK). We (Thomas Damm Als and I) are involved by testing the panmixia hypothesis of European eel (i.e. that the species consists of a single randomly mating population), using molecular markers and partly based on samples collected during the Galathea 3 Expedition (see below).
See EELIAD homepage and BBC's "World on the Move".
Funded by the EU FP7.  

Galathea 3 - Spawning biology, recruitment and genetic population structure of European eel (Anguilla anguilla) in the Sargasso Sea.
Multidisciplinary project aimed at solving some of the "classical" problems regarding the European eel (see project home page [in Danish]). Apart from coordinating the project, I am now particularly involved in the analysis of genetic population structure of the species, based on microsatellite DNA analysis of eel larvae (leptocephali) collected in the Sargasso Sea during the Galathea 3 expedition in March-April 2007 (with Thomas Damm Als, DTU Aqua, Greg Maes, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and Louis Bernatchez, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada).
Funded by the Villum Kann Rasmussen Foundation, Elisabeth and Knud Petersen's Foundation and TK Holding.

GeM - Genetic Monitoring Working Group
Working group aimed at developing the novel field of genetic monitoring and its application in conservation and management of wild populations (PIs Fred Allendorf and Mike Schwartz)
Funded by NESCENT and NCEAS, USA

Selection and gene flow in time and space: microsatellite DNA based genome scan of brown trout populations
This project aims at detecting footprints of divergent selection between a set of neighbouring brown trout populations. All populations have been subject to stocking with brown trout from the same hatchery strain. Moreover, samples are available from the present as well as from the 1920s-1950s (DNA from old scale samples). Consequently, we can estimate selection on both a geographical and temporal scale. Moreover, we can assess which genes are selected against when domesticated brown trout are stocked into wild populations. The project is based on analysis of ca. 100 microsatellite loci, some of which are known QTLs for ecologically important traits or are known to be linked to important coding genes.

Local adaptation and temperature reaction norms: juvenile life history traits in brown trout
We initially started this project in the winter 2004-2005. We compared four ecologically divergent brown trout populations in a common garden set-up. Crosses were set up according to a paternal half-sib design and batches of offspring from each family were incubated at 2, 5 and 8 degrees C.  We tested for selection at life history traits using a Qst-Fst approach and tested for differences in reaction norms among populations. We did indeed find evidence for selection and crossing reaction norms for two traits, thus suggesting that brown trout populations can be adaptated to local temperature regimes. The results were published in: Jensen, L.F., Hansen, M.M., Pertoldi, C., Holdensgaard, G., Mensberg, K.-L-D. & Loeschcke, V. (2008). Local adaptation in brown trout early life-history traits: implications for climate change adaptability.   Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 275, 2859-2868.

We are now continuing the project by setting up crosses between the F1s from the same populations. The purpose is to analyze gene expression at three different incubation temperatures and thereby analyze reaction norms at the transcriptomics level. (Kristian Meier, PhD student, Lasse Fast Jensen, former PhD student, Cino Pertoldi & Volker Loeschcke, Aarhus University, Søren Thomassen and Gert Holdensgaard, Danish Centre for Wild Salmon, and Louis Bernatchez, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada).
Funded by the Danish Rod License Funds

Genetic monitoring of North Sea houting (Coregonus oxyrhynchus)
The North Sea houting is critically endangered. We monitor effective population sizes by analysis of microsatellite DNA markers from contemporary and historical samples (old scale samples). (With Dorte Bekkevold, DTU Aqua).
Funded by the Danish Forest and Nature Agency and the EU LIFE Program