Our researchers

Simon Eckerström Liedholm

Simon Eckerström Liedholm

wildlife contraception  |  Population density  |  fish welfare  |  invertebrate welfare  |  invertebrate population control  |  biostatistics

Current projects

  • Modeling the welfare impact of wildlife fertility control in populations regulated by density-dependent processes.

  • The effects of the New World screwworm on wild animal welfare.

  • Injuries and welfare in wild fish.

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About Simon

Simon Eckerström Liedholm is a Researcher at Wild Animal Initiative. Simon’s research focuses on population dynamics, wild animal welfare interventions like wildlife contraception, and the welfare effects of injuries. He has previously researched how information campaigns affect people’s decisions about whether to keep their cats indoors, and wrote a report on the persistence and reversibility of interventions to improve wild animal welfare. His current work includes modeling the effects of contraception as an extension of his previous work on density dependence and wildlife contraception together with Luke Hecht, and a project on the welfare effects of injuries in wild, free-living fish.

Education

Before joining Wild Animal Initiative, Simon defended his PhD thesis at Stockholm University, focusing on behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and brain size evolution in fish. He has taught advanced biostatistical methods and fish biology to master’s and PhD students, and has supervised graduate student research projects. He has also organized multiple field trips for Master's students on a marine biology course.

Selected publications

*Eckerström Liedholm, S., Hecht, L., & Elliott, V. (2024). Improving wild animal welfare through contraception. BioScience, 74(10), 695–700. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae071

*Jeanson, A. L., Dietrich Gotzek, Mam, K., Hecht, L., Charvet, P., Eckerström-Liedholm, S., Cooke, S. J., Pool, T., Elliott, V., & Torres, Y. (2022). Inland Fisheries Management - Case Studies of Inland Fish. In Mehner, T., & Tockner, K. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Inland Waters (pp. 343–354). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-819166-8.00170-5

Sowersby, W., Eckerström‐Liedholm, S., Rowiński, P. K., Balogh, J., Eiler, S., Upstone, J. D., Gonzalez‐Voyer, A., & Rogell, B. (2022). The relative effects of pace of life‐history and habitat characteristics on the evolution of sexual ornaments: A comparative assessment. Evolution, 76(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.14358

Sowersby, W., Eckerström-Liedholm, S., Kotrschal, A., Näslund, J., Rowiński, P., Gonzalez-Voyer, A., & Rogell, B. (2021). Fast life-histories are associated with larger brain size in killifishes. Evolution, 75(9), 2286–2298. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.14310

Rowiński, P. K., Sowersby, W., Joacim Näslund, Eckerström‐Liedholm, S., Gotthard, K., & Björn Rogell. (2021). Variation in developmental rates is not linked to environmental unpredictability in annual killifishes. Ecology and Evolution, 11(12), 8027–8037. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7632

Rowiński, P. K., Laurila, A., Gotthard, K., Sowersby, W., Lind, M. I., Richter-Boix, A., Eckerström-Liedholm, S., & Rogell, B. (2020). Parental effects influence life history traits and covary with an environmental cline in common frog populations. Oecologia, 192(4), 1013–1022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04642-8

Eckerström‐Liedholm, S., Sowersby, W., Morozov, S., Bijl, W., Rowiński, P. K., Gonzalez‐Voyer, A., & Rogell, B. (2019). Macroevolutionary evidence suggests trait‐dependent coevolution between behavior and life‐history. Evolution, 73(11), 2312–2323. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13845

Eckerström-Liedholm, S., Sowersby, W., Gonzalez-Voyer, A., & Rogell, B. (2017). Time-limited environments affect the evolution of egg–body size allometry. Evolution, 71(7), 1900–1910. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13286

Corral-López, A., Eckerström-Liedholm, S., Der Bijl, W. V., Kotrschal, A., & Kolm, N. (2015). No association between brain size and male sexual behavior in the guppy. Current Zoology, 61(2), 265–273. https://doi.org/10.1093/czoolo/61.2.265

Oliveira, M. B., Eckerström Liedholm, S., Lopez, J. E., Lochte, A. A., Pazio, M., Martin, J. P., Mörch, P. R., Salakka, S., York, J., Yoshimoto, A., & Janssen, R. (2014). Expression of arthropod distal limb-patterning genes in the onychophoran Euperipatoides kanangrensis. Development Genes and Evolution, 224(2), 87–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-014-0466-z

*Denotes papers published while working at Wild Animal Initiative.