The Krams Lab

14/05/2026

Here is the “BigBlueButton” link to Professor Ülo Niinemets lecture, “Plant Stress in Globally Changing Climates,” at the University of Latvia: https://bbb.lu.lv/kar-oma-sdx-rvg
This is the official online access link for the lecture.
We look forward to your participation!

You can create your own rooms to host sessions, or join others using a short and convenient link. The UL web conferencing server is made using BigBlueButton and the Greenlight front-end.

13/05/2026

Tomorrow, May 14, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., Ülo Niinemets, an internationally recognized Estonian plant physiologist and ecophysiologist, member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, and professor at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, will deliver a guest lecture on the topic “Plant stress in globally changing climates.”

Address: in Riga, at the University of Latvia’s Nature House, at 1 Jelgavas Street, in Auditorium 320A

Everyone is welcome!

11/05/2026

The University of Latvia is pleased to welcome Professor Ülo Niinemets, one of Europe’s leading plant scientists and a globally recognized expert in plant stress physiology, climate change biology, and plant–atmosphere interactions. Prof. Niinemets is a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, a multiple ERC grant recipient, and among the world’s most highly cited researchers in plant and environmental sciences.
📅 14 May 2026
🕝 14:30
📍 Auditorium 320A, Nature House, Jelgavas iela 1, University of Latvia.
Lecture title: “Plant stress in globally changing climates.”
All botanists, plant physiologists, forest researchers, agricultural scientists, ecologists, conservation biologists, and all others interested in global environmental change are warmly welcome.

25/04/2026

Yesterday we had an amazing Big Clean-Up Day at the DU Agrobiological Station! 💪🌿

Together, we completely cleaned out the old house, removed rubbish, and cut down branches that were blocking access and getting in the way of vehicles. It was hard work, but the results were worth it! 🙌

After a productive day, we enjoyed delicious barbecue and warmed up with hot soup cooked in a large pot over the fire. 🍲🔥

A huge thank you to everyone who took part and contributed their time, energy, and effort. Together, we can achieve so much! 💚

01/04/2026

Our new paper is out in Current Zoology (Oxford University Press)! While dietary tryptophan is often associated with reduced lifespan or no effect, we find the opposite—conditional on developmental exposure to predation risk.

Abstract. Environmental stressors and diet both play key roles in shaping animal lifespan, yet their interactive effects remain poorly understood under eco

23/03/2026

How can depression be studied experimentally? In this short video, we show how we model and analyse depression-like states to better understand how stress affects the brain and behavior.

This protocol presents a scalable multimodal behavioral pipeline for Drosophila melanogaster that integrates forced swim exposure with locomotor, decision-ma...

18/03/2026

Our new study demonstrates that therapeutic exercise is associated with rapid, transdiagnostic reductions in anxiety, with clear dose–response patterns. The results support the integration of structured physical activity into routine psychiatric care.

IntroductionAcute anxiety is common across psychiatric disorders and may interfere with treatment engagement. Although physical activity is known to improve ...

13/03/2026

Excited to share our new paper in Frontiers in Bird Science on winter survival strategies in the European greenfinch. We show that body reserves depend on social rank and flock size—and that disease outbreaks such as Trichomonosis can dramatically reshape these relationships. During epidemic winters, birds with higher body reserves were much more likely to survive until spring. A fascinating example of how disease pressure can alter the adaptive trade-offs between competition, energy storage, and survival in social animals.

IntroductionSocial living offers both benefits and costs, particularly when infectious disease alters the balance between competition, energy reserves, and s...

11/03/2026

🐦 New publication from our lab!
Willow T**s are famous for their chick-a-dee calls used to mob predators—but our new study suggests these calls may also be used before a predator is even detected. When approaching potentially risky feeding sites, birds produced mobbing-like calls that helped recruit flock members, especially in dense forest where visibility is low. This suggests that chick-a-dee calls may function as a proactive warning and coordination signal under uncertain predation risk.

30/01/2026

Happy news: our recent paper on developmental serotonergic modulation of adult behavior in Drosophila has been selected as an Editor’s Choice Article in Life.
Many thanks to all co-authors — great teamwork!

Life, an international, peer-reviewed Open Access journal.

28/12/2025

Our new paper has been published in Biology (MDPI) today. In this paper, we examine how developmental dietary exposure to escitalopram affects behavioral variability in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). Using a high-throughput Y-maze assay, we show that escitalopram reduces inter-individual variation in turning behavior, resulting in more predictable movement patterns, whereas tryptophan has no consistent effect. These findings highlight behavioral individuality as a sensitive phenotype for detecting subtle pharmacological effects during development.

Behavioral individuality, often termed animal personality, reflects consistent patterns of behavioral variability across individuals. In fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), pharmacological and dietary manipulations affecting neuromodulatory systems have been shown to alter behavior, but their eff...