Welcome to the website of the newly established Videvall Lab! We are based at Uppsala University. More specifically in the Department of Ecology and Genetics, Animal Ecology program, at the Evolutionary Biology Centre in Uppsala, Sweden.
Our research explores molecular interactions between wild animals and their microbiomes. We use various DNA sequencing techniques and bioinformatic tools to study the microbial communities of animals, and how these are shaped by the diet and the genomes of their animal hosts. In addition to the ongoing research projects, we collaborate with several international colleagues on interesting projects such as host-parasite genomics and conservation genetics. For more information about our work, please see the Research page.
(Note: the website is currently under construction.)
News
2024
Nov 2024 - Matias has officially started his MSc project in the lab!
Oct 2024 - Elin visited Stockholm University to be part of a dissertation committee during a PhD defense on leaf beetle microbiomes.
Oct 2024 - Elin and Charlotte travelled to Umeå to visit SLU and Göran Spong, our collaborator in the wolverine project. Charlotte stayed to prepare lots of samples in the lab!
Oct 2024 - Madde travelled to Spain for 2 weeks to do field work, collecting samples from wild horses. It was a very successful trip!
Oct 2024 - New preprint on diet-microbiome associations in giraffes.
Oct 2024 - New preprint for an R package to analyze ecological communities.
Oct 2024 - Ester has officially started her postdoc in the lab!
Sep 2024 - Elin gave an invited talk about wildlife hologenomics at the very first SciLifeLab Planetary Biology conference in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Sep 2024 - New paper on the Hawaiian honeycreeper phylogeny, insect diet, plant diet, and microbiomes accepted in Ecology and Evolution!
Sep 2024 - Two new guest researchers, Marta Garrigós and María Dolores (Lola) Barón Rodriguez, are joining the lab this autumn. Lola is studying preen gland microbiomes of birds and Marta is studying gut microbiomes of mosquitoes.
Aug 2024 - New paper about the functions of animal microbiomes accepted in Functional Ecology!
June 2024 - Madde, Charlotte and Elin traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in the Applied Hologenomics Conference. Madde and Charlotte got great feedback and discussions at their posters!
May 2024 - Congratulations Charlotte Enkvist who is starting her PhD in the group this summer!
May 2024 - Congratulations to Dr. Ester Martínez Renau, who was awarded a postdoc scholarship from the Lawski Foundation! Ester will join the lab in the autumn.
May 2024 - Matteo successfully presented and finished his Erasmus project on animal gut microbiomes in captivity!
May 2024 - Charlotte Enkvist successfully presented her Master's thesis about sand lizard microbiomes!
May 2024 - New collaborative paper about hologenomics published in TREE!
Apr 2024 - Catarina Cunha joined the lab to work on the flycatcher microbiome project in the molecular lab and the field.
Apr 2024 - Madeleine van Well Bergström joined the lab for a project on feralization on the horse microbiome.
Mar 2024 - Elin gave an invited talk about her career in academia during a career event organized by Uppsala University students (Bio-dagarna).
Feb 2024 - Matteo Resca joined the lab for a literature project on microbiomes in captive animal species.
Feb 2024 - Elin gave a talk about coprophagy at the local Revolution conference and it was voted the best talk! Charlotte presented a poster about sand lizard microbiomes and got great comments!
Feb 2024 - New preprint on functions of wild animal microbiomes using omics data.
Jan 2024 - Elin had a lovely trip to Madrid, Spain, invited by David Canal and team members at the Natural History Museum. Will collaborate on a project related to flycatchers, aging, and gut microbiota.
Jan 2024 - Elin spent a day at Skansen zoo doing radio interviews about the role of gut microbiomes in animal conservation.
2023
Dec 2023 - Editorial and Special Issue on the Evolutionary Significance of Animal Microbiomes now published in Journal of Evolutionary Biology!
Nov 2023 - Perspective paper accepted in Molecular Ecology!
Nov 2023 - Awarded a 4-year Starting Grant from the Swedish Research Council! I will set up my lab at Uppsala University.
Oct 2023 - Awarded a research grant from the Foundation for Zoological Research to work on the impacts of feralization on the horse microbiome!
Sept 2023 - New preprint on molecular ecology of microbiomes in the wild.
Sept 2023 - Attended the SciLifeLab Science Summit 2023 at Stockholm University.
Sept 2023 - Awarded 2 years of funding from the Birgitta Sintring Foundation!
Sept 2023 - Successfully completed fieldwork on wild horses and bison in the mountains of Riaño, Spain.
Aug 2023 - Co-organized a fun symposium on avian microbiomes at the EOU 2023 conference. Gave a review talk on the advancement of the field. We also organized a well-attended roundtable.
Jul/Aug 2023 - Moved to Sweden from the US! I’m now based at Uppsala University.
May 2023 - New paper on environmental microbiomes in Chernobyl accepted in Environmental Pollution!
April 2023 - New paper on how coprophagy rapidly matures gut microbiota accepted in Evolution Letters!
Feb 2023 - Roundtable proposal for EOU 2023 conference accepted!
Feb 2023 - New paper accepted in Journal of Heredity! This one was led by Kristina Paxton, evaluating honeycreepers’ transcriptome response to malaria, with important conservation implications.