Ph.D. Students
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Research Interests: |
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Research Interests: I am primarily interested in the effects of habitat heterogeneity on the movement of organisms in fragmented landscapes. I plan to study the effects of matrix heterogeneity on the movement of different butterfly species. Through mark recapture experiments and experimental manipulation of resource availability I plan to study how different types of agricultural crops and post agricultural vegetation of varying structural complexity affect movement between habitat patches and how resource availability can change these movement rates. |
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Research Interests: I am generally interested in investigating the factors and driving forces that shape amphibian community structure. Given that the structure of ecological communities has been studied primarily in the context of the present and recent past, my research will also focus on the historical aspects of such assemblages. I will explore different approaches for using phylogenies of different species in a community together with ecological and morphological data to get a clear picture of what has shaped the community. Another area in which I am interested in it is the amphibian declines and their causes. Although many causes for global amphibian declines have been proposed, few studies have provided convincing proof of causal relationships or have attempted to distinguish direct causes. Currently, I am investigating the effects of habitat loss and climate change on five amphibian species in Ecuador in collaboration with people from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. |
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Research Interests: My general interest is the conservation of biodiversity at different spatial and ecological scales. Particularly, I’m interested in the use and improvement of current approaches to ecological niche modeling to understand the spatial patterns and processes of biodiversity (i.e. what and how environmental factors shape species distributions and abundances?) and their use to predict future trends under climate and landcover change scenarios. These models, coupled with reserve selection algorithms, can be used to optimize the way in which conservation resources are spent in the face of global threats. Currently, I’m using this approach to recommend conservation priorities for birds in Colombia in a collaborative project with the Biomap Initiative (Conservation International) and aim to expand the taxonomic coverage of the project in the long term as more freely distributed databases arise. |
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Research Interests: My research interests include how the fields of landscape ecology and behavioral ecology can be used in conjunction to inform conservation and land management decisions. We are living in a human-dominated world, and must therefore focus on how to implement conservation within human-altered landscapes. Determining how animals choose habitat and how their movements and dispersal are affected by these new landscape structures is essential in predicting their long-term survival. For my doctoral research I plan to study how the composition and configuration of pristine and degraded habitats in the landscape of Yanayacu, Ecuador, influence dispersal, reproduction, and survival of several forest birds. Further interests of mine are the use of GIS and remote-sensing data to predict future species' distribution patterns, and studying the effects of and removal strategies for invasive mammals. |
