I am a community ecologist studying the role of biodiversity for stability of species communities and functions they provide under a changing environment. What makes communities sensitive to change, what enforces their stability? I am investigating the role of functional traits, their dominance and diversity, in determining stability of communities. As methods, I use long-term observational data to explore large-scale patterns, and combine them with field and greenhouse experiments to test specific hypothesis of possible drivers behind the large-scale patterns.

Currently, I am working as an Academy Research Fellow, funded by the Academy of Finland (2022-2027). Before this, I worked as an independent junior research group leader, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (2021-2022). In 2018-2021, I worked as a postdoc at the Research Center for Ecological Change focusing on long-term changes in boreal forest ecosystems. I investigated how abiotic changes, such as climate change and forest management, are transform diversity of forest understory communities by influencing ecological processes between different organisms. This was a collaborative project with researchers from the Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE) and was built on Luke’s extensive observational dataset on forest plant communities.

In my previous postdoc project (2015-2018), I studied how functional diversity controls ecosystem functioning under environmental change. The project was funded by a personal postdoc grant from the Swedish Research Council VR (2015-00498). My main collaborators and mentors were professors Eric Post (UC Davis, California) and Harry Olde Venterink (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium).

I did my PhD in Umeå University, Sweden (2008-2014), where I studied plant-herbivore interactions using field experiments in tundra. This work yielded novel insights on the role of herbivores for stability and resilience of plant communities under climate change.

Teaching

• Environmental and global ecology on a Bachelor level course 'Ekologian perusteet' (BIO-104)
• Community and ecosystem ecology on a Bachelor level course 'Yksilöistä ekosysteemeihin' (BIO-304)