Ilkka Hanski

Ilkka Aulis Hanski ForMemRS (14 February 1953 – 10 May 2016) was a Finnish ecologist at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The Metapopulation Research Center led by Hanski, until his death, has been nominated as a Center of Excellence by the Academy of Finland. The group studies species living in fragmented landscapes and attempts to advance metapopulation ecology research. Hanski proposed the core-satellite hypothesis of species distributions. Metapopulation ecology itself studies populations of plants and animals which are separated in space by occupying patches.