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Population dynamics of blue mussels in a variable environment at the edge of their range

Academic dissertation To be presented with the permission of the Faculty of Biosciences of the University of Helsinki, for public criticism in Auditorium 3 in Viikki Building B on December 1 st 2006 at 12 o' clock noon. The thesis is based on the following articles, which are referred to in the text by their Roman numerals: edge of the range: population structure, growth and biomass along a salinity gradient in the northeastern Baltic Sea.– Marine Biology 140: 991–999. Dynamics of Mytilus edulis: recruitment limitation or density-dependent regulation structuring populations along a distributional range margin? – Manuscript. Invariant size selection of blue mussels by roach despite variable prey size distributions?– Marine Ecology Progress Series, in press. Distribution of a marginal population of Mytilus edulis: responses to biotic and abiotic processes at different spatial scales. – Submitted manuscript.The article was part of a bigger project designed by MW and AL. In addition, several people assisted with various tasks. Their contributions are acknowledged in the relevant parts in separate papers. PREFACE The road of life is usually shaped by, and lined with, a continuous set of unplanned events. We make continually choices that appear innocent and undisruptive in nature but that may be the crossroads along our path through life. So is my academic road, shaped by small choices that have made me traverse junctions, which have twisted the road, and sometimes caused major turnings on the path. Professionally I entered one crossroads in 1997, and I am still walking along that pathway. Bored with long days of economic theory at the Swedish School of Economics in Helsinki, combined with economic work-practice, I needed a radical change in my life. Accidentally, I read an advertisement in a paper about a new professional diving programme and soon I ended up at a one-year professional diving course. During the course, I wrote a seminar paper on blue mussels and while sorting endless (as I thought at that time – how little did I know) amounts of mussels, I accidentally ran into my becoming supervisor, Mikael Kilpi. Mikael had two years earlier launched a 3-year project on the couplings between eider dynamics and blue mussels and needed a professional diver for the project. From that moment onward, the Crown of Gods creation (the blue mussel)– to quote Mikael Tedengren– has been a part of my life. In the early years, the project only had a …