Dr Sofia Gripenberg, University of Oxford

Sofia Gripenberg

Postdoctoral Researcher / Visiting Researcher (funded by the Academy of Finland)

Research Interests

I am an insect ecologist broadly interested in the interactions between insect
herbivores, their host plants, and their natural enemies. In my PhD work
(completed in 2007, University of Helsinki) I examined how the spatial
distribution and properties of host plants affect the distribution and
population dynamics of specialist insect herbivores. In this context, I used a
host-specific leaf miner feeding on oak trees as a study system.

During my thesis work I developed a particular interest in the role of
interspecific interactions in dictating population dynamics of individual
species and in determining the structure of ecological communities. This has
brought me to Oxford, where my work focuses on food webs depicting the
interactions between herbivores and their parasitoids, and between tropical
trees and their insect seed predators.

Selected Publications

Insect seed predators and environmental change

Lewis, O. T. & Gripenberg, S. (2008) Journal of Applied Ecology 45: 1593-1599.

Spatial population structure of a specialist leaf-mining moth

Gripenberg, S., Ovaskainen, O., Morriën, E. & Roslin, T. (2008) Journal of Animal Ecology 77: 757-767.

Resource selection by female moths in a heterogeneous environment: What is a poor girl to do?

Gripenberg, S., Morriën, E., Cudmore, A., Salminen, J-P. & Roslin, T. (2007) Journal of Animal Ecology 76: 854-865.

Up or down in space? Uniting the bottom-up versus top-down paradigm and spatial ecology.

Gripenberg, S. & Roslin, T. (2007) Oikos 116: 181-188.

Seeing the trees for the leaves - oaks as mosaics for a host-specific moth

Roslin, T., Gripenberg, S., Salminen, J-P., Karonen, M., O'Hara, R B., Pihlaja, K. & Pulkkinen, P. (2006) Oikos 113: 106-120.