Biogeographer and community ecologist
I am a biogeographer with broad interests in macroecology, community ecology, island biogeography, insect ecology, evolution, and biodiversity research. My main research aim is to determine why biodiversity – and in particular community structure – is geographically distributed the way it is, and to identify the processes that domain the spatial and temporal dynamics of ecological assemblages.
Currently I am a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at the Department of Biogeography and Global Change of the Natural History Museum in Madrid (MNCN), a research institute of the Spanish Scientific Council (CSIC). I am also a Collaborating Professor at the Departamento de Ecologia of the Federal University of Goiás (UFG) in Brazil, and an Associate Researcher of both the Azorean Biodiversity Group – CITA A of the University of the Azores and the Centre for Environmental Biology (CBA) of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon in Portugal.
I am Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers of Biogeography – the official journal of the International Biogeography Society (IBS) – and Subject Editor of Ecography. Apart from the IBS, where I’m part of the Subcommittee on Advertising and Outreach, I am also member of the British Ecological Society (BES), the Spanish Association for Terrestrial Ecology (AEET) and the Aragonian Entomological Society (SEA).
After my research training and PhD at the Natural History Museum in Madrid (1996-2004), I worked as a postdoc at the Azorean Biodiversity Group in Terceira, Azores (2004-2005) and the Center for Macroecology of the University of Copenhagen (2006). From 2007 to 2010 I was as a Research Associate at the NERC Centre for Population Biology of the Imperial College London at Silwood Park. Finally, in May 2010 I moved back to the MNCN, first as a JAE-Doc Research Associate, until the start of my current position in December 2010. During 2012-2012 I was also a Visiting Researcher at the Departamento de Ecologia of the UFG. See a recent version of my CV for more detailed information.