The Trondheim group

The Trondheim group is based at the NTNU, with Elisabet Forsgren and Trond Amundsen as lab leaders. Current group members include PhD students Andreas Svensson and Karen de Jong, masters students Camilla Brevik, Jorunn Eriksen and Sebastian Wacker, and MSc Aleksandra I. Johansen. The group has collaborations with scientists in Norway, Sweden, Finland, England, Wales, and the US. Almost all recent field work within the group has been conducted at Kristineberg Marine Research Station in Sweden, and is historically a joint KMRS/NTNU project. The main model organism is the two-spotted goby (Gobiusculus flavescens), but studies have also included common, sand, painted and black gobies. The focus is on reproductive dynamics, with a main emphasis on sex roles, sexual selection, parental care, and egg quality. Sex role studies originated from an observation of highly variable sex ratios in the wild, and have revealed a shift from conventional to reversed sex roles over a single breeding season. Sexual selection studies have addressed mate choice of males and females, and male-male competition for nest sites. Parental care work has focussed on filial cannibalism and the trade-off between mate attraction and parental care; egg quality work on effects of carotenoids on eggs and larvae. The importance of visually detectable microsporidian parasites has been studied in relation to mate choice and parental care. The current main focus of the group is on ultimate and proximate control of sex roles in two-spotted gobies.