Postdoc, PhD

Christian Jørgensen

It is a common misunderstanding that evolution is a slow process, played out on the geological timescale, and detectable only as tiny and gradual shifts between successive fossils. The real picture is much more dramatic, and easiest to detect where human interventions rapidly change the environment in which species live. One well-known example is the rapidly evolving resistance towards antiobiotics seen in many microbes, haunting hospitals and costing suffering and billions of dollars worldwide. Another example, which is my main interest, is fisheries-induced evolution.

Fishing has become the main source of mortality in exploited stocks worldwide, and may be four to five times higher than the natural mortality in heavily harvested stocks. Darwin taught us that the individuals that survive and reproduce are the ones that pass their genes on to the next generation and thereby shape a species through evolution. The questions are then:

• Since we are fishing so intensely, which fish survive?
• How will that change cod, herring, capelin, and all the other well-known species?
• How fast will these changes be, and how will the rest of the ecosystem be affected?
• How can we manage our fisheries to minimize the negative and unwanted effects?

To answer these question I use evolutionary modelling. Part of my work has been to predict evolutionary effects in specific stock or under specific circumstances. A second topic I have worked on is to develop the modelling methods we need to do so. In addition, I am also interested in a range of other questions where models based on evolution can increase our understanding of biology or come up with predictions for specific patterns or processes that we can observe in nature.