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Teaching Staff

Professor MERILÄ, Juha

Professor MERILÄ, Juha

Associate Director (Ecology & Biodiversity Research groups) and Chair Professor in Ecology and Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, HKU

MSc (Finland); PhD (Sweden)


  • 3917 3607
  • 2858 3477
  • KBSB 3N19

Teaching areas

  • Evolution
  • Ecological genetics
  • Conservation genetics
  • Zoology

Research Interests

  • Local adaptation
  • Evolution in small populations
  • Determinants of genetic diversity
  • Relative roles of natural selection, genetic drift and phenotypic plasticity in explaining population differentiation
  • Evolution in response to climate change

Current research

  • Determinants of genetic diversity
  • Heterogenous parallel evolution – causes & consequences
  • Inbreeding and mutation loads in population isolates

Publications and news 

  • Fang B, Kemppainen P, Momigliano P, Merilä J 2020. Oceans apart: heterogenous patterns of parallel evolution in sticklebacks. Nature Ecology & Evolution 4:1105-1115
  • Natri HM, Merilä J, Shikano T 2019. The evolution of sex determination associated with chromosomal inversion. Nature Communications 10: 145.
  • Radchuk V, T Reed, C Teplitsky, M van de Pol, A Charmantier, C Hassall, P Adamik, F Adriaensen, M Ahola, P Arcese, JM Avilés, J Balbontin, W Blanckenhorn, A Borras, S Burthe, J Clobert, N Dehnhard, F de Lope, AA Dhondt, NJ Dingemanse, H Doi, T Eeva, J Fickel, I Filella, F Fossøy, AE Goodenough, SJG Hall, B Hansson, M Harris, D Hasselquist, T Hickler, J Joshi, H Kharouba, J Gabriel Martinez, J-B Mihoub, JA Mills, M Molina Morales, A Moksnes, A Ozgul, D Parejo, P Pilard, M Poisbleau, F Rousset, Mark-Oliver Rödel, D Scott, JC Senar, Constanti Stefanescu, BG Stokke, K Tamotsu, M Tarka, C Tarwater, K Thonicke, J Thorley, A Wilting, P Tryjanowski, J Merilä, B Sheldon, AP Møller, E Matthysen, F Janzen, S Dobson, ME Visser, SR Beissinger, A Courtiol, S Kramer-Schadt. Adaptive responses of animals to climate change: not universal, likely insufficient. Nature Communications 10:3109.
  • Li Z, Kemppainen P, P Rastas P, Merilä J 2018. Linkage disequilibrium clustering based approach for association mapping with tightly linked genome-wide data. Molecular Ecology Resources 18: 809-824.
  • Momigliano P, Jokinen H, Fraimont A, Florin A-B, Norkko A & Merilä J 2017. Extraordinarily rapid speciation in a marine fish. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences USA, 114:6074-6079.

Awards and honours

  • 2005 Elected to Finnish Academy of Science and Letters