Annual Report 2003 Annual Report 2003 Metapopulation Research Group Department of Ecology and Systematics University of Helsinki Edited by Tapio Gustafsson Contact information Address: Metapopulation Research Group Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences PO Box 65 (Viikinkaari 1) 00014 University of Helsinki FINLAND Phone: +358 9 1911 (Exchange) Fax: +358 9 191 57694 E-mail: [email protected] Web site Metapopulation Research Group (UH), http://www.helsinki.fi/science/metapop/ MRG-logo designed by Gergely Várkonyi Cover photo: The Namorona River runs throuh the rainforest of the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar. Photo by Tapio Gustafsson Contents Preface............................................................................................... 6 Brief history and overview of the MRG......................................... 7 Projects in the MRG ...................................................................... 10 Ecology, genetics, and evolution of metapopulations ............................. 10 On the wings of checkerspots: A model system for population biology .............................................................. 11 Metapopulation theory ............................................................................ 12 Population genetics theory ...................................................................... 13 Metapopulation dynamics and reserve network design .......................... 14 Spatial ecology of arboreal insects ......................................................... 15 Metapopulation biology of the Glanville fritillary butterfly ................... 16 Biology of the parasitoids of the Glanville fritillary............................... 17 Demography and genetic structure of shrew populations on small islands......................................................................... 18 Ecology of small rodents and their predators ......................................... 19 Spatial ecology and human interactions of the brown bear .......................................................................... 20 Population biology of trembling aspen ................................................... 21 Gene flow in aspen .................................................................................. 22 Spatial ecology of plant-pathogen interactions ....................................... 23 Biology of an old adaptive radiation: Evolutionary community ecology of the beetle tribes Canthonini and Helictopleurini in Madagascar.................................................. 24 Influence of climate change on the distribution and abundance of species ................................................................ 25 Biodiversity in boreal forests .................................................................. 26 MRG personnel .............................................................................. 27 Laboratory facilities ...................................................................... 61 Field sites ........................................................................................ 63 Åland Islands........................................................................................... 63 Kuhmo ..................................................................................................... 63 Greenland ................................................................................................ 65 Wattkast ................................................................................................... 66 Madagascar: Ranomafana National Park ................................................ 67 Synopsis of the year 2003 .............................................................. 69 Budget ..................................................................................................... 69 Publications ............................................................................................. 70 Theses ...................................................................................................... 75 External visits .......................................................................................... 80 Seminars, lectures, and talks ................................................................... 81 TV, radio, and newspapers ...................................................................... 85 Teaching and courses .............................................................................. 87 Honors and awards .................................................................................. 89 Council memberships .............................................................................. 89 Meetings organized by the MRG ............................................................ 90 Visitors to the MRG ................................................................................ 90 Prospects for the year 2004 ........................................................... 92 5 Occupied (filled) and empty (open) habitat patches suitable for the Glanville fritillary in the Åland Islands in the autumn 2003. MRG students and researchers searhing for Melitaea cinxia larvae during our Annual Meeting in the Åland Islands in May. Photo by Evgeniy Meyke. 6 - Preface Preface The past year was our first full year in the new campus. It must be a sign of things going pretty well here in Viikki that one does not hear any more comments about what went before in the old building in downtown. Office space continues to be a problem, but this is what we expected - and I am glad to report that everybody did have a desk in 2003. New exciting projects were started in 2003. My own memories from June relate to the hugely successful experiments with the Glanville fritillary that were accomplished in the large cage that was erected in Åland in the spring. I would be very surprised if this experimental set-up would not turn out to be another hall mark of the long-term research in Åland; the opportunities for truly novel research are definitely there. The new project on tropical forest dung beetles in Madagascar was officially launched with a MRG expedition landing in Antananarivo in November. This was the real highlight of the year for many of us. I was busy until the very end of the year with the two edited volumes that are now, at last, in press and will appear in early 2004, the Ehrlich & Hanski volume on the biology of checkerspots and the new Hanski & Gaggiotti metapopulation volume. There were disappointments in 2003, too. The checkerspot project in China had to be cancelled at a short notice because of the SARS epidemics. The 6th Framework Programme of the EU has not much to offer to European population biologists and, sadly, it appears, population biologists have not much to offer to the EU. The structure of our research group continued to change in 2003. I suppose that the temporal pattern in the relative numbers of graduate students, post docs, and senior researchers that is evident in the graph on p. 7 is rather typical for the first 10 years of most research groups that were started with just one researcher. First a rapid increase in the numbers of graduate students; then a period of disproportionate numbers of post docs; followed by an increase in senior researchers, reduction in post docs, and stabilization of the numbers of graduate students. The MRG has now experienced all these stages, as well as the departure of the first senior researchers. Oscar Gaggiotti moved to a professorship in Grenoble and Marko Nieminen to a full-time position in his consulting company. Thanks to Oscar and Marko for all your contributions to the MRG. Two MRG researchers have progressed to the level of senior researcher, Tomas Roslin and Saskya van Nouhuys. Three students completed their PhD in 2003, Mar Cabeza-Jaimejuan, Gergely Várkonyi, and Sari Haikola, while Johanna Gripenberg, Mervi Koskela, Varpu Mitikka, and Astrid van Teeffelen started. Finally, the ranks of our junior members increased less than in the past years, but one event was nonetheless recorded also in this front. Our warmest congratulations to Tapio and Riitta (girl). Ilkka Hanski History and overview - 7 Brief history and overview of the MRG Professor Ilkka Hanski has worked on spatially structured populations since the late 1970’s. The early work dealt primarily with small-scale spatial population structure, but since the early 1980’s the focus shifted to larger spatial scales and to metapopulation dynamics in the sense of assemblages of discrete local populations connected by migration. In 1989, Hanski organized the first international meeting on metapopulation dynamics together with Professor Michael Gilpin (San Diego, UC), which resulted in the first edited volume on the subject (Gilpin & Hanski, 1991, Metapopulation Dynamics: Empirical and Theoretical Investigations, Academic Press, London). This meeting led to the conception of the MRG. Ongoing collaboration with Professor Mats Gyllenberg (Department of Mathematics, Turku, Finland) started in 1990, the long-term field project on the Glanville fritillary butterfly in the Åland Islands was started in 1991, and the first post graduate students and post docs were accepted in the MRG in 1992 and 1993, respectively. The national research council (the Academy of Finland) nominated the MRG as one of the Centres of Excellence in Research in 2000-2005 (www.aka.fi). The figure below illustrates the growth of the MRG since 1992. 8 - History and overview Currently there are 15 post graduate students, 3 post docs and 6