Susanne Åkesson

Susanne Åkesson (born 1964) is a Swedish migration expert. She is a professor of Zoology at Lund University. She was a member of the team that proposed that the stripes on zebras deter insects like tabanidae.

Susanne Åkesson
Born1964 (age 58–59)
Östhammar, Sweden
EducationUppsala University
Alma materLund University
Scientific career
InstitutionsLund Universirty

Life

Åkesson was born in Östhammar in 1964. She is a professor of Zoology at Lund University, where she is also the Director of the Centre for Animal Movement Research (CAnMove).[1][2]

In 2009 she shared the August Prize with photographer Brutus Östling for their book about the migration of birds. This was the first time the prize had been given for a non-fiction book about a natural science subject.

She has co-written research which proposes that the stripes of a zebra may deter horseflies as they find them unattractive.[3] Along with her colleagues, she received the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for this research in 2016.[4] Her research about stripes on zebras has been continued. Researchers believe that the colour difference in the stripes leads also to a temperature difference which confuses the tabanidae. These insects rely on finding blood vessels which they locate based on temperature. According to 2023 research the insects lear that they cannot easily find blood vessels on striped skin and soon learn to look elsewhere.[5]

She has worked on research showing that male Caspian terns lead their young on their first migration, transmitting cultural knowledge of migration,[6] that several species of birds respond significantly to moonlight,[7][8] and that Common swifts spend months at a time in the air without landing.[9]

She is a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[2]

References
  1. "CAnMove - Centre for Animal Movement Research". Lund University. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  2. "Susanne Åkesson". Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  3. Egri, Ádám; Miklós Blahó; György Kriska; Róbert Farkas; Mónika Gyurkovszky; Susanne Åkesson & Gábor Horváth (March 2012). "Polarotactic tabanids find striped patterns with brightness and/or polarization modulation least attractive: an advantage of zebra stripes". The Journal of Experimental Biology. 215 (5): 736–745. doi:10.1242/jeb.065540. PMID 22323196.
  4. "Ig Nobels 2016: The Comical Science That Makes You Think". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  5. "Váratlan fordulat a zebrák csíkjairól folytatott tudományos vitában". MSN (in Hungarian). Retrieved 2023-02-28.
  6. "Like father like child – male parents lead young birds on first migration". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  7. "A Lunar Eclipse Sheds Light On a Fascinating Behavior In Birds". Audubon. 2022-04-11. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  8. "How Birds Perform Amazing Migratory Feats—and the Mysteries That Remain". Audubon. 2022-04-08. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  9. "These Birds Fly Almost a Year Without Landing". Animals. 2016-10-27. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
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