People

Professor in Evolutionary Ecology

Office: 5715 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: marjo.saastamoinen@helsinki.fi
Phone: + 358 50 448 4471

• Life history ecology & evolution
• Dispersal
• Genotype-phenotype association
• Phenotypic plasticity
• Ecological immunology

Post-doctoral researcher

Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
Email: audrey.bras@helsinki.fi

Post-doctoral project : Spatio-temporal genetic variation of butterflies in relation to land use and recent population trends, parts of a newly established Centre for Ecological Genetics (EcoGenetics)

• Population genetics
• Landscape genomics
• Ecology and Evolution
• Human-driven environmental changes

Post-doctoral researcher

Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: natalie.vandis@helsinki.fi

Natalie is interested in the evolutionary potential of wild populations under global change. She combines long-term ecological data of Lepidoptera populations with genomics approaches to find factors that influence the rate of adaptation.

Project: Assessing the adaptive potential of wild butterfly populations using temporal genomics

• Population genomics
• Eco-evolutionary dynamics
• Glanville fritillary butterfly (Melitaea cinxia)

Post-doctoral researcher

Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: arthur.rodrigues@helsinki.fi

• Community ecology 
• Macroecology and macroevolution 
• Biogeography

Doctoral researcher

Office: 5202 (Biocenter 3)

E-mail: patrick.heidbreder@helsinki.fi

PhD project "Survival Under Warming Climate and Adaptive Potential of Hybridization". Funded by the LUOVA doctoral programme (Jan. 2023 - Dec. 2024). Supervised by Jonna Kulmuni and Marjo Saastamoinen.

• Hybridization and speciation
• Evolutionary genomics
• Adaptive potential
• Thermal performance

Doctoral researcher

Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: ulla.riihimaki@helsinki.fi

PhD project “Linking population trends to ecological performance in butterflies”. Funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation as a part of project “The missing link: unraveling the role of genetic variation of beneficial arthropods in agro-ecosystems" (to Marjo Saastamoinen as a co-PI).

• Ecological performance
• Genetic diversity
• Population ecology
• Land use & biodiversity

Doctoral researcher

Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: lola.fernandezmultigner@helsinki.fi

PhD project "Genetic diversity in Range-Shifting Butterflies". Funded by the LUOVA doctoral programme (Jan. 2024 - Dec. 2027). Supervised by Marjo Saastamoinen and Audrey Bras.

• Landscape genetics
• Spatial ecology
• Genetic diversity
• Environmental change & conservation

Doctoral researcher

Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: juho.kokko@helsinki.fi

PhD project: “Urban evolution in butterflies, and the potential of citizen science”. Part of the larger project “PLASTI-CITY: Urban evolution of seasonal plasticity across space and time” funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024–2027). Supervised by Matthew Nielsen, Marjo Saastamoinen, and Pauliina Rautio.

• Urban evolution
• Seasonal ecology
• Science education
• Pieris napi

Coordinator

Office: 5413 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: suvi.ikonen@helsinki.fi