SciLifeLab’s contribution to biodiversity – insights from five scientists
On this year’s Biodiversity Day, SciLifeLab researchers share how their work is helping us better understand – and protect – the living world around us.
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed May 22 as the International Day for Biological Diversity to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues, and to commemorate the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
“To effectively safeguard the planet’s biological richness, we must first invest in knowing and understanding the diversity of life – from genes to ecosystems. Only by grounding our actions in robust scientific knowledge can we preserve biodiversity in a changing world,” says Anabella Aguilera, Scientific Coordinator at the SciLifeLab Planetary Biology strategic area.
For this day, we asked five SciLifeLab researchers how their research contributes to biodiversity knowledge, protection, or monitoring – and what can be done to improve it.
Courtney Stairs, Lund University
How does your research contribute to biodiversity knowledge, protection, or monitoring?
In the last 60 years, the oxygen content of our oceans have decreased by almost 2%. This decrease has a profound impact on the animal and microbial life within these ecosystems and heavily impacts biogeochemical cycles of important elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur. Our team is trying to understand the cellular adaptations animals and microbes use to thrive without oxygen to discover how biodiversity may respond to changing conditions. This knowledge can inform conservation efforts by identifying species that may be particularly vulnerable or resilient to ocean deoxygenation.
What would you like to say to the public, policymakers, or fellow researchers to support biodiversity research and/or conservation?
We live in a microbial world. Microbes are the engines of our ecosystems shaping nutrient cycles and climate processes. I’d like to see biodiversity research and conservation projects consider the microbes in monitoring efforts.
Gabriela Montejo-Kovacevich, Uppsala University
How does your research contribute to biodiversity knowledge, protection, or monitoring?
I study how insects adapt to changing environments, using a mix of ecological and molecular tools. Evolution can be surprisingly fast when the conditions are right. By uncovering which species are adapting, and why, my research helps reveal the natural processes that support resilience to environmental change. These insights can guide conservation efforts to preserve the evolutionary potential of wild populations.
What would you like to say to the public, policymakers, or fellow researchers to support biodiversity research and/or conservation?
With genomic tools advancing and data growing rapidly, we have a unique opportunity to decipher how biodiversity responds to the challenges it faces. This knowledge is essential if we’re to protect not just species, but also their ability to adapt and thrive. Supporting these processes gives biodiversity its best chance to persist in a rapidly changing planet.
Sandra Jämtgård, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
How does your research contribute to biodiversity knowledge, protection, or monitoring?
My research group focuses on the root-soil-microbial interface and understanding of how mechanisms in that interface affect plant nitrogen availability. Insight into sustainable plant nitrogen availability is crucial for future tree growth and food production. Climate change affects these interactions and understanding of these processes will inform us about the resilience of plants to climate change.
We focus on microbial biodiversity in soil around roots at the scale of root tips. Plant roots release different compounds that stimulate microbes in the soil, some beneficial and some pathogenic. The presence of these microbes affects nitrogen availability. At the scale of a root tip, there is so much we don’t know about biodiversity and its function that we now can investigate with new tools. I am really curious to explore more about this interface and its functions.
What would you like to say to the public, policymakers, or fellow researchers to support biodiversity research and/or conservation?
There is so much that we don’t know about biodiversity and its functions, we need to fill in these blanks to treat the planet sustainably. Insight into sustainable plant nitrogen availability is crucial for future tree growth and food production.
Mafalda Ferreira, Stockholm University
How does your research contribute to biodiversity knowledge, protection, or monitoring?
My research aims to uncover the genetic and evolutionary mechanisms underlying seasonal adaptations – specifically molt phenology – in mammals and bird species. This trait is critical for camouflage and survival in highly seasonal environments covered with snow. By leveraging historical museum specimens and modern genomic tools, my work provides insights into how populations have adapted to past environmental conditions and how they might respond to current and future climate change.
Understanding this evolutionary flexibility, or constraint, is essential for predicting species’ resilience and informing conservation strategies. Additionally, identifying genomic regions under selection enhances our ability to monitor adaptive genetic variation over time, offering a powerful tool for biodiversity monitoring.
What would you like to say to the public, policymakers, or fellow researchers to support biodiversity research and/or conservation?
Biodiversity research is essential – not just for understanding nature, but for protecting the systems that support all life, including human societies. Every species carries unique adaptations shaped by evolution, and losing them means losing irreplaceable biodiversity that may be key for the resilience of ecosystems we depend on. My work shows how even simple traits like seasonal color changes are tightly connected to the environment and can unravel quickly under climate stress.
To protect biodiversity, we need long-term investment in research, conservation, and monitoring. That means supporting science, funding basic research focused on biodiversity and evolution, and using genetic tools to guide well-informed, more resilient conservation strategies that incorporate information about how species adapt to their environments.
Maliheh Mehrshad, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
How does your research contribute to biodiversity knowledge, protection, or monitoring?
Viruses that infect microbes are the most diverse biological entities on our planet. They play a considerable role in modulating nutrient cycling in the lake environment and can even terminate a bloom. They also contribute to transferring genes within the community and by doing so they affect the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of their host. Research in our team focuses on revealing the diversity of viruses infecting microbes in lake ecosystems, their interactions and co-evolution with their hosts and other viruses and finally resolving their impact on lake ecosystems.
What would you like to say to the public, policymakers, or fellow researchers to support biodiversity research and/or conservation?
Viruses strictly depend on their host, or hosts, for replicating their genome and building their structural components. This has led to traditional debates about whether they should be considered “alive” or not and partially hindered their consideration in some biodiversity perspectives. Considering their great impact on modulating microbial diversity and their fast evolution, understanding their diversity in the context of their interactions with their host is very important and demands more research.
SciLifeLab’s role in advancing biodiversity research
The Planetary Biology strategic area at SciLifeLab aims to foster collaboration and optimize the use of cutting-edge life science infrastructure to drive research from the ecosystem to the planetary scale. By integrating molecular-level data with ecological and evolutionary perspectives, this initiative supports transformative research that deepens our understanding of biodiversity and ecosystem function in a changing world.
SciLifeLab platforms offer researchers across Sweden access to advanced technologies, expertise, and tailored services – critical resources for advancing research in environmental life science. Several of the projects highlighted in this article were made possible through collaborations with SciLifeLab’s platforms, including Metabolomics & Exposomics, Cellular & Molecular Imaging, Genomics and Bioinformatics. These platforms enable data generation and analysis that underpin discoveries essential for biodiversity monitoring, conservation, and policy development.
Top image: Gabriela Montejo-Kovacevich in the field.
