Lars-Anders Hansson - Biography#

RESEARCH

My research interests within ecology and evolution are very broad, but initially I focused on competitive interactions between periphyton, phytoplankton and macrophytes in aquatic ecosystems, which was also the theme of my PhD thesis. During my research career, I have focused mainly on aquatic food web interactions, behavioral ecology, such as causes for movement and migration, but also on eco-evolutionary interactions. After my post-doc at UW Madison, USA, I became interested in polar regions and have spent several field seasons in both Arctic and Antarctic environments.

NOVEL RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES

To solve and advance scientific issues I have developed several infrastructures, including a large-scale climate system for assessment of effects from future warming perspectives; a system which now has copycats in both Austria and China. Moreover, to allow behavioral and evolutionary studies of mm-sized aquatic animals I developed, in cooperation with physicists, mathematicians and chemists, an advanced tracking technique based on nanotechnology (quantum-dots).

SUPERVISION

These infrastructures have together served as platforms for more than 50 international publications, including eight PhD theses, and more than ten international cooperations, including both Master´s, PhD students and post-docs. In total I have supervised 18 PhD students to dissertation and hosted 21 post-docs from twelve different countries.

APPLIED STUDIES

Although most of my research has been focused on basic science, I have also worked with applied aspects, such as effects from eutrophication (excess of nutrients) and brownification (excess of humic substances) in lakes, with specific focus on solutions, such as restoration and construction of wetlands.

TEACHING AND BOOKS

During my teaching (about 70 students each year) I noticed that an appropriate textbook within freshwater ecology and evolution was lacking and we therefore wrote a textbook and later also one book on Animal Migration and another on Chemical Ecology (Published by Oxford University Press).

SCIENTIFIC SERVICES

I have served in several basic science research councils, such as Swedish Research Council (VR) and European Research Council (ERC), but also in applied councils, including Swedish Research Council for the Environment (FORMAS) and Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket, EPA) and performed evaluations for several international research councils. I also served in the Scientific Advisory Board of, for example, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Leibniz Institute of freshwater ecology and inland fisheries (IGB Berlin) and has been Associate Editor in the scientific journals Oikos, PLoS one and Journal of Plankton Research.

BIBLIOMETRICS (Web of Science 29 Dec. 2025)

#Publications: 252; H-factor: 69; #citations: 18081; 2022 I was selected as “Highly Cited Scientist” by Clarivate Web of Science.