Frederico Neves and Juliana Kuchenbecker, from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais at Belo Horizonte, have joined the group for a 6-month sabbatical, until May 2024.

Juliana is interested on the spatiotemporal patterns of herbivorous insects. She works at the Serra do Cipó, a mountain complex at Minas Gerais, and in particular with the effects of fire on arthropod communities. During her stay we will work on analysing the impacts of anthropic disturbances in the open habitats of this mountain range, with the ultimate aim of developing effective management strategies that conciliate human activities and biodiversity conservation.

Fred works in a range of topics within tropical insect ecology. During his sabbatical we will analyse the spatial and temporal patterns of diversity and coexistence using the long-term data from tropical mountain forest islands that his team has been gathering for over ten years.