Nils Christian Stenseth
I am a core member, research professor and the chair of CEES. In addition, I am a chief scientist at the Institute of Marine Research.
My research interests span a broad spectrum of ecological and evolutionary topics, most of which are rooted in population biology. Before the early 1990s, much of my work was purely theoretical. Later, I adopted the research strategy of ‘asking’ available data what the underlying ecological or evolutionary process might most likely be – all within a theoretical perspective. I strongly favour comparative studies – by comparing similar features between different (but comparable) systems, we typically learn more than we otherwise would have done. Variations in population densities in time and space – and the underlying demographic processes – have been a main interest of mine over the years. An important example is the interdependent relation between density-dependent and density-independent processes, where the ecological effect of climate is an important example of the latter.
