ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology during our centenary year, but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Elin Persson is an author on ‘ Thermoregulatory consequences of growing up during a heatwave or a cold snap’, published in JEB. Elin is a PhD student in the lab of Andreas Nord at Lund University, Sweden, investigating the consequences of temperature variation on bird development.
Elin Persson
How did you become interested in biology?
I do not remember how I got interested in biology, I only know that I always have been. At a really young age I used to teach my family things I had learnt from elsewhere, names of species and so on. When I started school, my teachers encouraged knowledge about nature and from there on it has only grown. I think the more you know about biology, processes, interactions or just number of species, makes you see the world in more detail and that I really appreciate.
Describe your scientific journey and your current research focus
I began my scientific journey at Lund University where I completed both my bachelor's degree, on house sparrows in farmlands, and my master's degree, which focused on the physiological effects of a heatwave in Japanese quail. I remained, both at Lund University and with temperature effects on birds for my PhD studies. Now I work with both Japanese quail and blue tits, studying their physiology and morphology. My research focus is on short- and long-term consequences of growing up during an extreme weather event, and if these manifest over a lifetime and between generations. I have made it halfway through my PhD and am looking forward to seeing what the rest has to offer.
How would you explain the main findings/message of your paper to a member of the public?
Temperature has pervasive effects on birds. In this paper, we looked at how metabolism, body temperature regulation and growth are affected when Japanese quail grow up under a heatwave or a cold snap. We saw that, at halfway to adulthood, birds that grew up during a heatwave have lower metabolism, that is, they produced less heat. They were also better at cooling down by evaporating water in hot temperatures. We could not see any benefits of dealing with cold temperature in birds that had grown up under a cold snap. After this, the birds were placed at a temperature that was intermediate between the heatwave and cold snap, until they were fully mature. When we measured them again as adults, none of the effects found at the end of the heatwave or cold snap remained. Therefore, warmer temperatures during development seem to prepare chicks to counter hot temperatures in the short term, but a heatwave growing up does not ‘program’ your body to be better at dealing with heat forever. Conversely, growing up cold does not seem to bring any advantages when dealing with mild cold, neither in the short nor the long term.
What do you enjoy most about research, and why?
The things I like most about research is that it is built on curiosity, passion and creativity. That your work is something that is based on your interests. This makes all hours spent on all different things meaningful. You are always learning something new, no matter if it is scientific or personal. You can use your creativity to figure out a good way of making a project work, fixing a broken car in the middle of a field project, or just that you have what it takes to go by yourself to the other side of the world for a conference or course. If it is something you really want to do, it will work, and when you realize that, so many more questions are open for you to answer them.
What is the most important piece of equipment for your research, what does it do and what question did it help you address?
The most important equipment for my research is the flow-through respirometry system. By letting air flow through an airtight chamber with the animal inside we can compare the ingoing gas concentrations of oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapor with the outgoing gas concentrations which we use to measure the animal's oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide production and water vapor production. From these data we can then calculate metabolic rates and evaporative water loss. These, in turn, give us the metabolic heat production and evaporative heat loss values that we wanted to study to see if there were effects of developmental temperature.
What is the most important lesson that you have learned from your career so far?
The most important thing I have learnt so far, and still encounter every day, is to always expect the unexpected. Just because something has not happened yet does not mean that it never will. You do not have to plan for every detail that could go wrong, but things can happen. Equipment can break from one day to another without any warning or changes. Internet could stop working, computers shut down, there are power cuts. But it is okay, it can be frustrating in the moment, but you will be one step wiser from the outcome.
What do you like to do in your free time?
What I like to do in my free time changes with season. During summer when it is warm, I like to spend time outside, anything from a walk in a park to hiking, picking berries or bird watching, to relax and place my thoughts somewhere else. During the winter, I like to play board games or read books. When instead of relaxing a bit of physical work is needed, I practice circus skills. I am eager to find new drops in aerial silks or learn a new skill on the tight wire to be challenged both in mind and body.
What's next for you?
The next step for me is to finish my PhD studies. This includes testing if there are any effects of developmental post hatch temperature in the wild by studying blue tits in heated nestboxes, but also looking at the effects on maximal temperature tolerances in quail as a follow up on the current study, and then see if any effects remain over generations. Then perhaps there will be an interesting postdoc opportunity to continue my journey.
Elin Persson's contact details: Lund University, Department of Biology, Ekologihuset, Sölvegatan 37, 22362 Lund, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]