Plenary speakers

Professor Törnroos-Remes is a marine ecologist with current research focus on the functioning of coastal areas, marine environments and seafloors. She uses and develops trait-based approaches that allow us to understand how marine organisms contribute to ecosystem services, and to predict ecological strategies in contrasting environments under global change. Another part of her research links marine ecology, social science, maritime law, and business. 

Assistant professor Henriques Antão is a global change ecologist with main research interests in biodiversity, macroecology and global change, particularly biodiversity patterns and synthesis, as well as how to generalize information across taxa, habitats, and scales. Her research uses long-term data to examine the patterns of biodiversity change over space and time, and links these patterns to large-scale environmental drivers, such as climate and land-use. 

PhD title: Hybridization of landlocked and anadromous Atlantic salmon: Potential genetic rescue in a population threatened by inbreeding

Many populations of conservation concern are isolated and threatened with inbreeding. These populations could benefit from genetic rescue, the introduction of genetic material from other populations. My thesis shows that the critically endangered landlocked salmon of the Vuoksi watershed (Salmo salar m. sebago) could benefit from hybridization with Baltic salmon, at least in the first crossbred generation. While this is indicative of genetic rescue, we also found signs of possible outbreeding depression, similarly to two earlier studies done on the same populations.