About the talk

The talk will be focuses on the impacts of climate change and deforestation on biodiversity, specifically examining how these forces drive species redistribution and disrupt biotic interactions in the Usumacinta river basin, a biodiversity hotspot in Mexico. Specifically, we propose to: a) model the geographical distributions of frugivorous mammals and their primary food plants under past, present, and future climatic conditions; b) conduct field surveys in three locations along the middle and upper watershed altitudinal gradient to characterise species assemblages and test hypotheses about distribution shifts and; c) develop empirical and theoretical interaction networks based on species distribution models and simulate their dynamics under current and future climate scenarios. This research provides insights into how climate change and habitat transformation synergistically affect biodiversity.

About the speaker

I am an ecologist interested in understanding the impacts of global change on biodiversity and ecological interactions. In 2015, I completed my PhD at the University of Pablo de Olavide with a fellowship from the foreign scholarship program of the Mexican Council of Science and Technology. Since then, I have strengthened my research in plant-animal interactions through postdoctoral positions at the Doñana Biological Station and in the Center for Advanced Studies Research in Mexico. Currently, I work as an Investigador por México- CONAHCYTat the Centro del Cambio Global y la Sustentabilidad in Mexico. My studies involve collecting field data on plant populations in tropical and Mediterranean ecosystems. The aim is to understand the factors that determine plant-animal interactions and their impact on plant population fitness in disturbed ecosystems. My research emphasizes the significance of individual-based approaches, where interindividual variation creates different contexts that explain general patterns of species interactions. It has been confirmed that the current spatial distribution of plants mostly depends on different and compensatory behaviors of the interacting partners. This help me understand the local occurrence of plant-animal interactions and how they determine different recruitment scenarios.