CURRICULUM VITAE
22.09.2011
PERSONAL DATA
Name: Riikka Maria Kaartinen
tel. + 358 (0)40-82 33 296
e-mail: riikka.kaartinen@helsinki.fi
Date and place of birth: 28.6.1979, Lohja
Nationality: Finnish
EDUCATION
2011
2006
1998
Doctor of Philosphy, University of Helsinki, Finland. Thesis: Spatial ecology of food webs:
herbivore-parasitoid communities on the pedunculate oak”
Master of Philosphy, University of Oulu, Finland. Thesis: “The significance of odours and
learning in the host location and parasitizing behaviour of Hyposoter horticola
(Gravenhorst)”
Graduation from comprehensive school with special focus on environmental education
LANGUAGE SKILLS
Finnish (native), english (excellent), swedish (good)
EMPLOYMENT
2011- Post doctoral fellow, Spatial Food Web Ecology Group, University of Helsinki
2006 - 2011 Doctoral student, University of Helsinki. Supervisor Dr. Tomas Roslin
2004 Research trainee on parasitoid taxonomy (6 months), Imperial College London, UK
2002 - 2005 Research assistant (8 months), Metapopulation Research Group, University of Helsinki
RESEARCH PROFILE
How surrounding landscape and species composition affect the occurrence and distribution of different
species in the community? This is one of the key questions in community ecology, which lies in the core
of my research interests.
In my PhD thesis, I examined how the composition of surrounding landscape affects the structure of
food webs, and how consistent these food webs are temporally. As a model system, I used a community
of specialized herbivorous insects on oak: gall wasps, leafminers and their natural enemies. For this
purpose, I sampled, reared and identified insect material with comprised of over 50,000 individuals
between 2006 and 2007. My thesis represents a new perspective: I constructed multiple, quantitative
food webs in a spatially explicit setting, at two different scales. Moreover, as a novel methodological
development, I used DNA barcoding to resolve potential cryptic species in the food web, and to examine
their effect on food web structure.
Now as a post doc I am working with two projects involving community function and food webs. The
first project untangles the relationship between ecosystem function and diversity, measured at the level
of species and functional groups. As the measure of function I use the decomposition of dung by dung
beetles and Oligochaeta. The second project is a long-term initiative where first fully quantitative food
webs are built for an arctic site, using arthropod community in Greenland as a model system.
Two of the projects that I have been involved in has incorporated parabiologists, or civic-science. These
projects recruited non-biologists to conduct the field work, at the scale that would have been
impossible for a group of researchers to conduct. Another of these studies examined patterns in oak gall
wasp diversity, where we recruited 124 people who examined over 400 oak trees across Finland. The
other is experimental study, where over 80 youngsters across Finland compared the decomposition rate
of dung on multiple cow pats where different functional groups in decomposition had been excluded.
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Until now, the key interest in my work has been insect diversity and function as a part of the
surrounding community and landscape. Especially I have focused on parasitoid wasps, to their
taxonomy, behavioural ecology and as a part of a food web.
In the future, I want to continue research with insect communities. They suit well for food web studies
on a large-scale, incorporating multiple species and trophic levels. Especially I would like to focus on
forces creating large-scale pattern in species diversity and function, and how human-induced global
change will restructure the interactions in food webs.
KEY PUBLICATIONS
Kaartinen R. & Roslin T. (2011) Shrinking by numbers: Landscape context affects the species
composition but not the quantitative structure of local food webs. Journal of Animal Ecology, 80, 622–
631.
Kaartinen R., Stone G. N., Hearn J., Lohse K. & Roslin,T. (2010) Revealing secret liaisons: DNA barcoding changes our understanding of food webs. Ecological Entomology, 35, 623-628.
van Nouhuys S. & Kaartinen R. (2008) A parasitoid wasp uses landmarks while monitoring potential
resources. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275, 377-385.
Kaartinen R. & Quicke D.L.J. (2007) A revision of the parasitic wasp genus Bathyaulax Szépligeti
(Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Braconinae) from Africa and Arabian Peninsula, Journal of Natural History,
41,125-212.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE

MSc student supervision, Bess Hardwick, “National Oak Gall Wasp Survey – mapping with
parabiologists in Finland”, Co-supervised with T. Roslin, 2007-2008

Supervision of research assistants from University of Helsinki and Finnish Forest Research
Institute, between 2006 - 2011

Professional Image -course, tutoring of group focusing for the profession as a researcher, 2009

Conservation Biology in Fragmented Landscapes, course tutor in 2007, 2009, and 2010

Bird identification, teacher for exchange students, University of Oulu, 2000
AWARDED GRANTS

Chancellors Travel grant, 600 - 1750€, in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011

LUOVA postgraduate school, 3000€, Travel grants, research visits to University of Edinburgh, UK
and University of Lund, Sweden, 2008

Finnish Entomological Society, 2000€, National survey of gall wasps on oak, 2007

Finnish Cultural Foundation, 1800 €, The Biology and Taxonomy of Parasitic Hymenoptera
course, Natural History Museum & Imperial College London, UK, 2003

Petter ja Margit Forsström Foundation, 2000€, student grant for research training in UK, 2003
INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS

European Ecological Federation Congress, Ávila, Spain, 25.-29.9.2011, Talk- High temporal
consistency in food web structure in the face of extreme species turnover

Gordon Research Conference on Plant Herbivore Interactions, Galveston, Texas, USA,
21.-26.2.2010, Poster- Not everything is cryptic: A comparison of food webs based on
morphological and molecular species characters

Symposium on the Biology of Gall Inducing Arthropods, Serra do Cipó, Brazil,
9.-14.8.2009, Talk- Not everything is cryptic: A comparison of food webs based on
morphological and molecular species characters

ICE, International Congress in Entomology, Durban, South Africa, 6.-12.7.2008,
Talk- Quantitative food webs in space: herbivore-parasitoid communities on
Pedunculate oak Quercus robur

Molecular approaches to study trophic interactions – Current progress and future
directions, Innsbruck, Austria, 1.-3.3.2007. Poster- Food webs in space: metacommunity
dynamics of insects on pedunculate oak
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OTHER PRESENTATIONS

Finnish Entomological Society,

Olari upper secondary school for mathematics and science, 2009. From Nature enthusiast to a
scientist [In Finnish]. Presentation of post graduate studies and the occupation as a scientist.

Helsinki Entomological Society meeting, 2009. Communities of aok gallers and leafminers in
southwest archipelago: what quantitative food webs tell us? [In Finnish]

Spring Symposium, doctoral student seminar, 2009. Department for Biological and
Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki. Introducing molecular methods in quantitative
food web studies.

Spring Symposium, doctoral student seminar, 2008. Department for Biological and
Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki. Large-scale survey of gall wasp communities on
oak in Finland. Kaartinen, R. & Hardwick, B.

Entomologists Go! -symposium, Turku zoological and botanical society, Turku, 2007. Gall wasps
– greater than their size. [In Finnish]

Spring Symposium, doctoral student seminar, 2007. Department for Biological and
Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki. Food webs in space: Quantifying interactions
among oak-associated insects. Kaartinen, R. & Roslin, T.
SCIENTIFIC EXPERT POSITIONS

Finnish Environmental Administration, Working group for conservation of Hymenoptera,
member 2005 
WWF Finland Working group for the Lesser White-fronted goose,
member 1999 - , secretary 2011PRIZES

Olli’s prize- award for the best talk, 2009, Spring symposium, Department for Biological and
Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki. 1000€ award for travelling expenses for an
international scientifical meeting.
ORGANIZING MEETINGS

Spring symposium, Department for Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of
Helsinki. Organizing a graduate student symposium, 2009
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