History
NRM research on recent fishes dates back to the earliest days of the museum, but normally 18th and 19th Century researchers only included fish research as part of their general zoological interest. Fredrik Adam Smitt, however, wrote important monographs on salmonid and gobiid fishes, and concluded the general treatise on Scandinavian fishes that had been published intermittently by Fries et al., intended mostly for Swedish use. Smitt's successors, Einar Lönnberg and Hialmar Rendahl produced numerous papers on fishes, and Rendahl may be considered primarily an ichthyologist. Whereas Lönnberg published mostly on marine fishes and African freshwater fishes, Rendahl was an authority on Asian freshwater fishes, particularly loaches. Considerable collections were obtained from China and Myanmar in the early part of the 20th Century. The Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, also had significant ichthyological research activity at the time, including two major expeditions to the Gambia, in 1931 and 1950. Those collections were eventually transferred to the NRM, and one of the expedition leaders, Alf Johnels, became head of the NRM Vertebrate department.Current research
Current research activities concentrates on tropical freshwater, particularly in Asia and South America, and on the systematics and biogeography of the major families Cichlidae and Cyprinidae. Projects on fishes occurring in Sweden are pursued on a smaller scale, but significant efforts are put into systematic and biogeographic analyses of salmonid and cottid fishes, and into inventories and conservation work on endangered Swedish freshwater fishes. Scientific staff supervise PhD candidates and degree students from Stockholm University and other universities.Find out more:
Resarch projects at the Ichtyological section
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