People

Professor of Plant Biodiversity, University of Helsinki

Office: 5616 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: anna-liisa.laine@helsinki.fi

Anna-Liisa Laine is an evolutionary ecologist who specialises in interspecific interactions - especially pathogens and parasites - and epidemiology.

Professor of Statistics - Group Leader

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science (Kumpula campus)
Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Program, Faculty of Bio- and Environmental Sciences (Viikki Kampus)

Office: D313 (Exactum building, Kumpula) and 5712 (Biocenter 3, Viikki)
E-mail: jarno.vanhatalo(a)helsinki.fi
Phone: +358 50 3175494

Jarno Vanhatalo is a statistician who specialises in developing Bayes methods and computational solutions to the analysis of long-term datasets.

Professor in Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology, University of Helsinki
Professor at SLU, Sweden
 

Office: 6414 (Biocenter 3)
Email: tomas.roslin@helsinki.fi

Professor Tomas Roslin is a community ecologist who specialises in the response of species communities to landcape fragmentation, Arctic environments and environmental change.

Professor in Evolutionary Ecology

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

Marjo Saastamoinen is an evolutionary biologist who specialises in the stress biology of wild species.

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

Office: 5617 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: irene.conenna@helsinki.fi

Irene earned a PhD in Wildlife Biology from the University of Helsinki in 2021. In REC, she is in charge of tasks concerning database management, data visualisation, GIS and fieldwork coordination.

Office: 5617 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: pinja.kettunen@helsinki.fi

Pinja is in charge of communications, personnel administration, project management and research support.

Office: 5617 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: paivi.kleemola@helsinki.fi

Päivi is in charge of REC's financial administration.

Office: 5601 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: elina.kaarlejarvi@helsinki.fi

Academy Research Fellow Elina Kaarlejärvi is a community ecologist studying how environmental changes and species interactions shape biodiversity and functioning of boreal forest and tundra systems. Her research group is affiliated with REC.

Office: 5711 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: hanna.susi@helsinki.fi

Hanna works in Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra funded project Biodiversity Solutions for Agriculture. In this project, the aim is to measure biodiversity of multiple taxonomic groups (microbes, invertebrates, birds, plants) in diverse farming systems and landscape configurations. In addition, Hanna investigates ecology and evolution in plant-microbe interactions.

• Host-pathogen interactions
• Plant ecology
• Agroecology
• Microbiome

Office: D318 (Exactum, Kumpula Campus)
E-mail: mikhail.shubin@helsinki.fi

I am a statistician and mathematical modeller working with ecological and epidemiological data. I'm interested in data visualization and philosophy of Statistics.

I'm currently working on marine biodiversity.

I am a statistician and mathematical modeller working with ecological and epidemiological questions and applications. Currently I am especially interested in how to best collect and analyze data from nature to understand its dynamics and mechanisms, for instance how to design meaningful ecological monitoring studies.

E-mail: helena.wirta@helsinki.fi

I am interested in ecological communities from various perspectives: what taxa they consist of, how are they structured, how they function and how did they form to what they are as well as how they change.

My research currently focuses on pollination communities. My main project examines honeybees and their interactions with microbes and flowers, assessing how these communities and interactions change and how they are formed, using DNA based identification.

E-mail: laura.antao@helsinki.fi

I am a global change ecologist. My main research interests are biodiversity, macroecology and global change. I am particularly interested in biodiversity synthesis and biodiversity patterns, and how we can generalize information across taxa and habitats, and furthermore across scales. In my research, I examine patterns of biodiversity change over space and time using long-term data, and link these patterns to large scale environmental drivers, such as climate and land-use.

E-mail: alyssa.cirtwill@helsinki.fi

My main research interests are how we can describe the ways species fit into ecological networks and what the network perspective can add to our understanding of ecology. I am currently investigating how phenological change in plants and insects affects pollination networks, including crops that we humans depend on. I am also interested in how we can draw better conclusions from messy and missing data.

Laine Lab
Office: 5617 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: krista.raveala@helsinki.fi

I work in Anna-Liisa Laine’s group with the main focus on the ERC-funded “The Coevolutionary Consequences of Biodiversity Change” project. My variable tasks include organizing field work, managing data and assisting with publications. Occasionally I get to go to the field. Together with our technician Tinja we take care of many kinds of practicalities in the Laine lab.

Laine Lab
Office: 5618 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: tinja.hyvonen@helsinki.fi

I work as a research technician mainly on the ERC-funded project “Coevolutionary Consequences of Biodiversity Change”. My work is very versatile and includes tasks in the greenhouse, laboratory and on the field. I also take care of chemical and equipment orders.

Laine Lab
Office: 5618 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: andrea.davrinche@helsinki.fi

Functional and community ecologist with a background in ecophysiology, I am interested in understanding the role of diversity and species interactions in responses of individuals, species and communities to environmental pressures.

I am especially enthusiastic about all things plant, and questions around how variation and plasticity play into diversity-related processes. In REC, my work aims at understanding community dynamics through time and space, as well as investigating the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship in Finnish forests.

• Community ecology
• Functional ecology
• Biodiversity - ecosystem functioning relationship
• Plant ecology

Laine Lab
Office: 5618 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: bastien.parisy@helsinki.fi

Laine Lab
Office: 5618 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: jean-baptiste.floch@helsinki.fi

Laine Lab
Office: 5618  (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: paula.thitz@helsinki.fi

Paula is interested in how vegetation diversity affects plant-invertebrate interactions and ecosystem functioning. In her current projects, she studies the effects of vegetation diversity and functional properties on soil fauna and aboveground arthropods in agroecosystems, and how the interactions between the two affect the functioning of these ecosystems. Additionally, she is interested in plant phenolic compounds (especially in boreal trees) and their bioactivity against abiotic and biotic stressors.

Laine Lab
Office: 5618 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: sonja.saine@helsinki.fi

I am a community ecologist interested in how various ecological processes, from environmental conditions to species interactions, jointly shape the patterns of biodiversity. In my postdoctoral research, I aim to understand how environmental changes alter plant-microbe interactions.

• Community ecology
• Biodiversity
• Species interactions
• Environmental change

Laine Lab
Office: 5618  (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: tuuli.rissanen@helsinki.fi

My research interests focus on understanding how environmental drivers shape patterns in species distributions, community composition and diversity at different scales. Tundra and boreal plants are especially close to my heart but I'm also interested  in combining information across taxa and different ecosystems. 

• Species-environment relationships
• Spatial and temporal patterns
• Biogeography
• Biodiversity

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
Office: 5619 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: emy.guilbault@helsinki.fi

I am a statistical ecologist with a background in Engineering in Agronomy - Ecosystems. My research interests are species distribution modelling, data quality aspects, and improving spatial and temporal predictions. I intend to combine conservation and species/communities aspects into species distribution modelling. On the field, I occasionally participate in bird ringing sessions!

During my postdoc at the REC, I will be analyzing ecological time-series datasets to understand how ecological communities and ecosystem functioning are changing over space and time across different habitats in response to climate change and human use of natural resources.

• Species distribution models
• Data quality
• Spatio-temporal patterns
• Environmental changes
• Biodiversity

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
Office: 5619 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: liam.singer@helsinki.fi

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
Office: Kumpula campus, A408 (Exactum)
Viikki campus, 5619 (Biocentre 3)
E-mail: nourhan.shafik@helsinki.fi

Nourhan is a postdoctoral researcher working on multivariate and time series analysis.

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group

Office 5619 (Biocentre 3)
E-mail: perttu.anttonen@helsinki.fi

I am an ecologist who is interested in how climate and land use change affect biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships. I am especially interested in plant-insect interactions.

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
Office: 5619 (Biocentre 3)
E-mail: sum-yi.lai@helsinki.fi 

Sammi is an aquatic ecologist, and her research interests include looking at the impacts of environmental change on aquatic species communities and food webs. Her current work as a postdoc in REC is on focused on looking at the changes in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships of fish larvae and phytoplankton communities in the Baltic Sea using joint species distribution models.

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
Office: 5619 (Biocentre 3)
E-mail: vilja.koski@helsinki.fi

Spatial Food Web Ecology Group
Office: 5401a (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: bess.hardwick@helsinki.fi

Spatial Food Web Ecology Group
Office: 5619 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: emilie.ellis@helsinki.fi

Emilie is a Postdoctoral researcher working on numerous projects within REC and the Spatial Food Web Ecology Group. She is an applied pollinator ecologist by training, with a special interest in the ecology of non-bee pollinators such as moths. Her current research addresses: 

• The relationship between biodiversity, land-use changes and ecosystem functioning.
• The species- and community- level temperature niche changes in response to climate change.
• The ecology of pollinators in agricultural and forest systems.

Life-history Evolution Research Group
Office: 5413 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: suvi.ikonen@helsinki.fi

Life-history Evolution Research Group
Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: arthur.rodrigues@helsinki.fi

• Community ecology 
• Macroecology and macroevolution 
• Biogeography

Life-history Evolution Research Group
Office: 5604 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: audrey.bras@helsinki.fi

Postdoctoral 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

Life-history Evolution Research Group
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)

Laine Lab
Office: 5618 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: sara.leino@helsinki.fi

PhD project “The Impact of Anthropogenic Disturbance on Disease in Natural Plant Communities”. Funded by the ERC as a part of Anna-Liisa Laine's “The Coevolutionary Consequences of Biodiversity Change” project. Supervised by Anna-Liisa Laine and Hanna Susi.

• Host-pathogen interactions
• Plant microbiome
• Plant ecology
• Environmental change & biodiversity

Laine Lab
Office: 5605 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: veera.nieminen@helsinki.fi

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
Kumpula campus
E-mail: ilaria.pia@helsinki.fi

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
University of Eastern Finland
E-mail: juho.kettunen@uef.fi

PhD project supervised jointly by Lauri Mehtätalo and Eeva-Stiina Tuittila from the University of Eastern Finland.

Environmental and Ecological Statistics Group
Kumpula campus, Exactum, A408
E-mail: karel.kaurila@helsinki.fi

Life-history Evolution Research Group / PLASTI-CITY: Urban evolution of seasonal plasticity across space and time
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

Life-history Evolution Research Group
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

Life-history Evolution Research Group / Project SpecIAnt
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

Life-history Evolution Research Group
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

Northern Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Research Group
Office: 5610 (Biocenter 3)
E-mail: daniel.fernandezgarcia@helsinki.fi

PhD project “Effects of global change and community assembly on ecosystem functionality in boreal systems”. Funded by the Research Council of Finland as part of Elina Kaarlejärvi's Academy Research Fellow grant. Supervised by Elina Kaarlejärvi and Jarno Vanhatalo.

• Functional ecology
• Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship
• Plant ecology
• Community ecology
• Global change