Our goal is to understand ecology and evolution at different scales with various approaches and study systems. We have a strong focus on how species interact, and how this shapes population and community stability, functioning and evolution. These studies range from the detailed analysis of ecological interactions between plants, microbes, and animals, to their leading role in the micro and macroevolutionary processes affecting population dynamics and speciation. We are interested in understanding how interactions of mutual dependency shape complex networks in ecological communities, acting as the architecture of biodiversity, and their direct consequences on ecosystem functions. We also study the conceptual integration of different levels of complexity and natural selection in explaining trait evolution and species diversification. We are examining the role of both genetic and non-genetic inheritance, the role of the environment as a phenotypic inductor via epigenetic regulation, and the possibility that such epigenetic changes may evolve under selection into accommodated genetic variation. We dig into the natural history of species, populations and communities to study species interactions, identify functional polymorphisms in candidate genes to account for ecologically and evolutionarily divergent life history traits, and assess the genomic bases of fitness reductions in endangered species. We focus in diverse study systems such as vertebrates, particularly amphibians, bats and birds, plants, pollinators, seed dispersers and host-symbiont interactions. Our work combines theoretical model development with detailed field work, molecular genetics and epigenetics, using both traditional genetics and new omics tools and chemical and microbiological analyses.
