Understanding how natural drivers and fishing shape ecosystem dynamics and their evolution is a fundamental challenge in sustainable use of natural resources. Atlantic cod in North Atlantic Ocean is a commercially and ecological important species, which in many locations collapsed thirty years ago due to fishing. Despite many attempts to recover the populations, the populations have shown little signs of recovery and may be facing extinction within decades. Thus, it is especially important to understand how the underlying drivers and characteristics of the species in the ecosystems inhibit or prevent recovery of collapsed cod populations. This project aims to explore how individual behaviour of species scale up to the level of ecosystem dynamics and evolution. The mechanistic understanding gained during this project is fundamental to predicting the effects of environmental change on ecosystem structure and to facilitate future development of best practices for ecosystem conservation.

2022

2024