Biography

I am an ecologist with broad interests in spatial ecology, macroecology, biodiversity conservation and global change biology. My main scientific achievements include incorporating complex meta-analytical and predictive models to study the effect of global change drivers on species distribution and abundance patterns across large scales. To this end, I collate and synthesize existing wealth of ecological data from the scientific literature, and combine it with remote-sensing products, trait databases, and phylogenetic trees to better understand the mechanisms, interactions and impacts of global change drivers on ecological communities and ecosystem functioning. I also collect data in the field using state-of-the-art technologies (e.g. camera traps, acoustic monitoring, and GPS trackers) to address pressing questions in community, population and movement ecology, and inform local-scale conservation of threatened steppe bird species.

A large part of my research aims at understanding species distributions and abundance patterns at several scales, from microhabitats, to home ranges and geographic ranges, using biogeographical, macroecological, and evolutionary principles. These include investigating the relative role of abiotic factors, biotic interactions and anthropogenic drivers on shaping species distributions and species abundance, elucidating mechanisms of species coexistence, and assessing macroecological patterns of trait variation along environmental clines, and under selective pressures in insular environments. I am also involved in extinction risk research via the development of tools that can assist IUCN Red List assessments (sRedList). Further, my research has contributed to strengthen the scientific underpinning of the model GLOBIO, which is routinely used to inform global and regional biodiversity assessments (e.g. IPBES).

My current research line is focused on the quantification of the cascading effects of defaunation on the ecosystem functioning of tropical forests. I am interested in understanding how the population declines and loss of seed dispersers, seed predators and herbivores may result in altered patterns of forest regeneration in the tropics via disruptions in fruit removal, seed dispersal and seedling recruitment. Ultimately I intend to establish a causal link between animal defaunation, forest regeneration and carbon stocks in tropical forests which can inform climate change mitigation schemes such as REDD.

I have authored 40 scientific papers, 2 book chapters and one book, with >1900 citations (h= 17). I have presented my research as lead author in multiple national (4, 2010 and 2021) and international events (8, 2016-2021). Additionally I have given 11 invited talks in national and international institutions including the University of Queensland (AU, e-seminar, 2021), University of Sevilla (ES, 2021), or Oxford University (UK, e-seminar, 2021). The total media attention of my research is 4596 according to Altmetric, including 4 Wikipedia articles, more than 100 news outlets worldwide and multiple policy documents. I am the editor of the blog of the Spanish Association for Terrestrial Ecology (AEET, 2020-ongoing) with >25000 views and > 17000 visitors in the past year, and I routinely collaborate with 11F’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science giving talks to middle and high school students or write posts in different outlets.

I have supervised 15 MSc students, 1 JAE-Intro fellow student, and have been the informal advisor of 3 PhD, 3 MSc, 1 BSc and 1 visiting graduate students. My supervisory activities have led to the publication of 5 articles (one as senior author), with one paper currently under review and 2 others about to be submitted. I am currently supervising 3 PhD students, one of them finishing in 2022. I teach the MSc course “Bird diversity and Conservation” at URJC (Spain) since 2015, and have taught the MSc course “Biodiversity and Ecological Assessment” at Radboud University (RU, Netherlands, 2015-2018). I am also a lecturer at the 2-day Training school in Species Distribution Models (SDM) organized by the COST Action CLIMBATS (14-15 Oct 2021).

I am Senior Editor of the journal Diversity and Distributions (2021-present, AE between 2019-2021) and AE of the journal Environmental Evidence (2010-present). I have reviewed 89 scientific articles to date (Publons). I have participated in national and international evaluation panels for Agencia de Evaluación de la Investigación (AEI, 2021), European Research Council (ERC-SYG, 2020) and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, 2019). I have been in the evaluation panel of 2 doctoral theses, and 2 MSc theses programs (URJC, UPO, 2019-2020). I am a member of the Scientific Committee of the 6th ECCB (August 2022). I am a member of the AEET since January 2020, member of the ATBC since 2019, and SCB in 2017-2018.