Since 1969, Bakke has been working in the field of parasitology with problems ranging from biodiversity and ecology of bird parasites (covering all endoparasitic helminth groups; i.e. digenean flukes, cestodes, nematodes, acanthocephalans, in addition to pentastomides of birds) to taxonomical and systematical problems related to endoparasitic digeneans of fish. Since 1989 he has been studying the ectoparasitic monogenean flukes in the genus Gyrodactylus which infect freshwater and marine fish, including the freshwater salmon killer, G. salaris. Since 1990, he has published 48 articles in internationally refereed journals (including 3 invited reviews), 58 abstracts and 14 scientific reports concerning the biology of G. salaris and its relatives on salmonids (see references). His research on the monogeneans has focused on different aspects of the parasites ecology, but especially host specificity, immunology, biology, epidemiology, systematics and phylogeny by use of a combination of field and experimental studies, the latter both in the field and in the laboratory. Lately, he has focused on morphological/genetic analyses of these parasites related to taxonomy and strain variation.
Bakke has during the years upgraded the aquarium unit at Department of Zoology at the Natural History Museum, with 13 research tanks for parasitological studies on fish parasites, and also developed and optimized methods for experimental manipulation of gyrodactylids under controlled conditions.
Bakke has supervised 9 post-graduates on projects related to his Gyrodactylus research. Currently two PhD students, one research assistant and one post.doc. are working in the Gyrodactylus group.
Bakke’s research has during the years attracted an external funding of ~NOK 9,500,000 (equivalent to ca. 1.2 million Euro) from especially, the Norwegian Research Council and the Directorate for Natural Researches.