Determined aquarist

Niclas Kolm at Stenshuvud in Skåne. Photo: Sofia Berlin Kolm.

Some children know exactly what they want to do in life. One such child was Niclas Kolm, who at just seven years old started his first saltwater aquarium, encouraged by his parents. Little did he know that forty years later he would have several thousand aquariums! Then he was inspired by Cousteau's underwater films. Now a professor of ethology at Zootis, he is as interested in fish behavior as he was when he was a child.

A soaring career

You could say that his education and career have gone smoothly. Since Niclas grew up in Sandviken,  Uppsala was the obvious choice for studying biology. Sure the zooecology courses were fun but the real eye openers were the statistics courses. Then Niclas discovered that he found statistics much more fun than he thought, a useful interest.

Niclas calls himself "extremely headstrong" and managed to design a doctoral project all by himself, something that no one would be allowed to do today. The project was about mate choice and investment in parental care in a mouth-rutting cardinalfish that is only found in central Sulawesi. There were many experiments in the lab's aquariums but also some field trips.

After his defense in 2003, Niclas spent a couple of years in Norwich and Edinburgh before returning to Uppsala and a research assistant position in 2006. In the summer of 2013, he finally came to Zootis in Stockholm as a professor and a few years later he stopped commuting and moved here. He has not regretted it. It feels almost unusual to hear someone praise Stockholm so much; Stockholm is a really "cool" city, he says.

Researching fish

Niclas' research is entirely focused on the brain, more specifically the evolution of the brain and the connection between the brain's morphology and the individual's behavior. This involves both lab experiments and comparative phylogenetic analyses. The latter are based on literature data and include thousands of species of vertebrates. But for the practical experiments the focus is on fish, especially guppies.

Niclas is not a great fan of animal experiments. Nevertheless, these are "nice" animal experiments, because if you are going to do learning experiments, the animals must absolutely not be stressed. That Niclas has a soft spot for his experimental animals is evident when he describes how they arrive and want to work when the researchers show up at the aquariums. "They are much more dog-like than you might think," says Niclas, "and a guppy can do a lot to get a freshly thawed Artemia".

Good to have a big brain?

Guppy brain. Photo: Alexander Kotrschal

Those of us who have read Winnie the Pooh know that he is a bear with a "very little brain" and not always so smart. But is it true that you are smarter if you have a big brain? Yes, says Niclas, at least in some respects. The brain of a guppy normally weighs 0.5 mg, but Niclas and his colleagues have bred fish with larger brains and seen that this can certainly affect behaviour.

They have also shown that a single region of the brain, in this case the telencephalon (the circled area in the image) can evolve independently of other brain regions. Such groundbreaking discoveries are only possible if you have thousands of aquariums and plenty of patience. And of course, lots of dissections are required.

Necessary and fun to teach

We leave the brains and move on to Niclas' other tasks. Teaching is both necessary and fun, he thinks, and strongly believes that you become a better researcher by teaching and a better teacher by researching. It is also obvious that teaching must be shared fairly - everyone must do their part! He himself teaches about 15% of his working time.

The faculty assignments

Niclas has several assignments within the faculty: as deputy section dean, he is part of the Board of Science and the IT Committee, for example, and from 2024 he is chairman of the Information Committee. He believes that the two committees are intimately connected when it comes to central issues such as how to attract new students and spread information both within and outside the university.

Recruiting is more than ever an IT issue, says Niclas, we can't do miracles by visiting schools, we have to have top class websites and we have to be visible on social media. We also need to develop collaborations with top international universities and attract their best students, something that requires a lot of time and work.

Many leisure interests

Niclas at work in underwater mode. Photo: Anders Berglund.

When Niclas talks about himself and his work, he likes to use words like "fanatic", so you start to wonder if he might have any energy left over for his leisure interests. But yes: even as a hobbyist, he claims to be fanatical with a succession of interests. He is an avid collector and he spends a lot of time in the garden. However, his greatest interest is traveling and eating good food, preferably at the same time. Sometimes work can been combined with pleasure, as for example during his time as a doctoral student when he was on fieldwork in the Indonesian archipelago.