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Maria von Post, PhD-student
My main research interests lie in conservation and behavioral biology, and on finding ways to work for a more sustainable management of our surroundings. In my PhD project I get to work with all these topics, and on an amazing bird – the house sparrow!
Photo 1. Close up of a male house sparrow (Passer domesticus).
During my PhD I will study the house sparrow and how its population decline is connected to the loss of heterogeneity in the agricultural landscape. I will do so by establishing colonies on farms in Scania (southern Sweden) with differences in key aspects such as surrounding environments (high or low patchiness) and type of animals or crop associated with the farm. I will follow these colonies during my PhD studies, map their ecology to detect any differences in demographic patterns such as breeding success and over-winter survival. I will also use behavioral indicators of habitat quality and perform molecular work to establish population structure. The major aim of this study is to try to find the main causes behind the population decline. Hopefully I will be able to contribute with new knowledge on how and why birds connected to the farmland are suffering from major population decreases, and that this could lead to improving conservational work.
Publications
Conference poster /oral abstracts
EURECO 2008, Leipzig - poster
OIKOS 2009, Uppsala - poster
BOU 2009, Leicester - poster
EOU 2009, Zurich – oral/poster
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Publisher: Department of Biology
Last modified 14 Dec 2011
Maria von Post
PhD Student
Biodiversity
Phone:
+46 46-2223822
E-mail:
Maria_von.Post@biol.lu.se
Supervisors
Collaborator
Curriculum vitae
Photo 2. Putting up nest-boxes to hopefully get good information on reproductive success on the farms that we are working on.
Photo 3. We catch the house sparrows (for ringing and biometric measurements) by putting up nets in places used as passages by the birds.
Photo 4. We will relate house sparrow performance to different values of heterogeneity in the landscape and at the farm level.