Ecosystem recovery dynamics and their response to climate change and habitat fragmentation (RECODYN)
Funding: European Research Council (2023-2027). Role: Principal Investigator.
Brief summary: Global change degrades ecosystems worldwide. To mitigate its effects is the environmental challenge of our age, and restoration has emerged as the main strategy to stem the biodiversity crisis and repair damaged ecosystems. Despite substantial progress on the number of restoration studies and datasets, there is a fundamental gap in our understanding and prediction of the patterns and mechanisms underlying ecological restoration and how they are altered by global change.
The goal of RECODYN is to determine the recovery rates and trajectories of biodiversity, community structure and ecosystem functioning in complex multitrophic communities, and how climate change and habitat fragmentation – two of the largest threats to biodiversity and ecosystems in terrestrial systems – influence those dynamics. To achieve this, I will use an integrative approach that combines the development of new theory on metacommunities and temperature-dependent food web dynamics in close dialogue with a unique long-term terrestrial mesocosm experiment. Read more
Transformative Rotations for AdaptatioN and Sustainable Future, Outcome and Resilience Mapping (TRANSFORM)
Funding: HORIZON-MISS-2023-CLIMA-01 (2024-2028). Role: Research collaborator
Brief summary: The vision of the HORIZON-MISS-2023-CLIMA-01-01 call is that Europe’s Regions will be responsible for their sustainable and resilient adaptation to climate change (CC), by developing Roadmaps for adaptation of agriculture to CC. These roadmaps will need to empower regional stakeholders to innovate new, nature-based solutions that meet society’s needs for CC adaptation through better planning that is compatible with national and international policy. TRANSFORM proposes that innovating new crop rotations – the sequences of crops that farmers use to achieve their farming goals – will deliver nature-based solutions for sustainable and resilient CC adaptation in arable and mixed farming. Working in the Atlantic Biogeographic Region (Bio-region) of Europe, we adopt an explicitly multi-actor approach in which stakeholders are in charge of the innovation. TRANSFORM will co-create with stakeholders tools and methods: for Regional-level Roadmaps that describe the needs for adaptation of local people in agriculture; for farmers to innovate crop rotations for their region using the Future Rotations Explorer tool; and, a Toolbox of spatio-temporal methods and tools for stakeholders to explore and evaluate the societal, economic and environmental indicators of impact of rotations. When embedded within our social science methods, these methods and tools will leverage an iterative ‘pipeline to innovation’ for CC adaptation in agriculture that produces lists of acceptable crop rotations, and maps for planning, across the Atlantic Bio-region, and ultimately the whole of Europe. This will allow the European Commission, EU member and associated states and their regions and stakeholders to make progress in attaining the goals of the EU Mission: Adaptation to Climate Change.
Unveiling the factors shaping agroecosystem stability under global change: phytochemistry, functional traits, and multitrophic interactions (ChEMISt)
Funding: European Research Infrastructure Consortium (AnaEE) – AgroServ TNA. Role: Co-PI
Brief summary: Maintaining the stability of multitrophic interactions is at the core of agroecology. Plant chemistry is a key mediator of such interactions, however few studies have addressed the impacts of global change on phytochemicals in a holistic manner. Our project aims to investigate whether and how global change factors affect chemical profiles of plants and, in turn, plant natural defences. We will study realistic perturbations (tilling, warming, fragmentation) in twelve connected pairs of enclosures located in a natural grassland, focusing on two target-plant species of agronomic relevance. We plan to measure leaf secondary metabolites at two time points, identify and count herbivores throughout the plant’s life cycle, and measure plant biomass and seed set as performance parameters. The results of ChEMISt will connect the effect of global change on phytochemicals to the disruption of specific plant-herbivore interactions, and will link plant functional traits to community dynamics and stability. It will inform which chemical classes and compounds are most affected by global change, and which factors are the strongest drivers of variation in leaf chemistry. In this regard, ChEMISt will provide key insights into chemical changes that will be useful to inform and implement adaptation measures in crop production systems.
Biodiversity-stability relationships under different perturbation scenarios (BEEWARE)
Funding: Spanish Ministry of Science & Innovation (MICINN – MINECO). Role: Research collaborator
Brief summary: A strong body of literature has demonstrated the positive effects of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning, as well as for the stability of several ecosystem processes. However, most of these approaches have focused on a single trophic level, ignoring the fact that biodiversity occurs across several organizational levels (from populations to ecosystems) and involves multiple interactions between species. Therefore, the understanding we have for one trophic level might not extend to more complex ensembles. Here, we suggest using plant-pollinator interaction data collected across a number of spatially-independent meta-communities through time, to explore the relatioship between biodiversity and stability at different organizational scales, from species diversity to interaction composition or community structure. We further propose a number of experimental approaches that will change species diversity levels, arising from a number of scenarios that are plausible given current climate change and practices regarding managed honeybees in protected areas, to evaluate whether and how baseline biodiversity-stability relationships might change. Our project aims to answer the following specific questions: 1. How does biodiversity at different organizational levels (from species to ecosystems) affect the stability of ecosystem processes? 2. How does a change in species diversity and species composition shift the diversity-stability relationships? 3. How will projected climate change affect these diversity-stability relationships? By connecting empirical data with complex theoretical models, BEEWARE will represent a fundamental step to improve our ability to predict the outcome of ecosystem disturbances and their impact on community structure and function, while focusing on multiple levels of biodiversity: from species, interactions and communities to functions.
Relaciones entre biodiversidad, función y estabilidad en ecología de comunidades (BIOSTABILITY)
Funding: Gobierno Vasco (PIBA; 2023-2026). Role: Research collaborator
Brief summary: Evidencias científicas previas han demostrado los efectos positivos de la biodiversidad para el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas, así como para la estabilidad de muchas de estas funciones. Sin embargo, la mayoría de estos estudios se han centrado en funciones relativas a un único nivel trófico, plantas en muchas ocasiones, ignorando las múltiples interacciones en las que estas plantas se ven involucradas. Por lo tanto, la evidencia de las relaciones biodiversidad-función y biodiversidad-estabilidad que tenemos para un nivel trófico podrían no extenderse a conjuntos multitróficos más complejos. Con BIOSTABILITY, proponemos utilizar registros de interacciones entre plantas y sus polinizadores, así como medidas de éxito reproductivo de las primeras, recogidos en una serie de metacomunidades espacialmente independientes a lo largo del tiempo, para explorar la relación entre la biodiversidad, la función y la estabilidad funcional. Así, además del efecto de la diversidad de especies, nuestro estudio consideraría el efecto de la diversidad y composición de las interacciones, así como la estructura de la comunidad resultante. La estabilidad funcional consta de múltiples dimensiones, como la invariabilidad temporal, pero también la resistencia y resiliencia frente a las perturbaciones, por lo que proponemos una serie de pequeñas perturbaciones a escala local que cambiarán los niveles de diversidad de las especies, para evaluar si las relaciones entre biodiversidad y estabilidad de referencia podrían cambiar y cómo. BIOSTABILITY pretende responder a las siguientes preguntas específicas: 1. ¿Cómo afecta la biodiversidad a diferentes niveles de organización (desde las especies hasta los ecosistemas) a la estabilidad funcional de los ecosistemas? 2. ¿Cuál es el efecto de las perturbaciones que modifican la diversidad de especies y su composición en las relaciones entre diversidad y estabilidad? 3. ¿Cómo afectará el cambio climático a las relaciones entre diversidad y estabilidad funcional? Al conectar datos empíricos con complejos modelos teóricos, el presente proyecto representará un paso fundamental para mejorar nuestra capacidad de predecir el resultado de las perturbaciones de los ecosistemas y su impacto en la estructura y función de las comunidades.
Ramón y Cajal Fellowship
Funding: Spanish Ministry of Science & Innovation (2022-2026). Role: Principal Investigator.
Brief summary: These are individual grants that work as start-up money to settle my research independent group. It recognises the innovation and scientific impact of my research line.
Ikerbasque Research Grant
Funding: Ikerbasque – Basque Foundation for Science (2021-2023). Role: Principal Investigator.
Brief summary: Start-up grant to begin an independent research group.
Provisioning and stability of multiple ecosystem services in agroecosystems
Funding: EU AgreenSkills + framework (2015-2018). Role: Principal Investigator.
Brief summary: The goal of the project is to develop a theory on the provisioning and stability of multiple ecosystem services (ES) and their synergies and trade-offs in heterogeneous landscapes. In agricultural landscapes, several networks involving bee pollinators and habitats at local and landscape scales seem to co-exist independently of each other, e.g. semi-natural elements are important for wild bees’ but compete for land use with crops. However, these networks are related, through their dependency on shared limiting resources. Farmland systems are also characterised by strong temporal variation, possibly leading to unstable dynamics in biodiversity or trophic relationships within communities or metacommunities. Consequently, trade-offs between the magnitude and stability of these ES and the magnitude and/or stability of crop production may occur through competition for space and habitat conversion, and the use of pesticides and herbicides in crops that also kill beneficial pollinators and weeds. Our goal is to offer new perspectives on farmland landscape management that better take into account the spatiotemporal dynamics of multiple ES, with two main aims: develop a theoretical framework of stability of multiple ES in heterogeneous landscapes, and study the ecological consequences of landscape management policies that take into account the stability of ES in addition to the magnitude in their provision. Read more
The Combined Effects of Climatic Warming and Habitat Fragmentation on Biodiversity, Community Dynamics and Ecosystem Functioning (FRAGCLIM)
Funding: European Research Council (H2020). 2017-2022. Role: Research colaborator.
Brief summary: The goal is to determine the individual and combined effects of climatic warming and habitat fragmentation on biodiversity, community dynamics, and ecosystem functioning in complex multitrophic communities. To achieve this, it uses an integrative approach that combines the development of new theory on metacommunities and temperature-dependent food web dynamics in close dialogue with a unique long-term aquatic mesocosm experiment. Read more
Food Webs at the Landscape Level: Are We Missing the Wood for the Trees?
Funding: NERC Grant (NE/K006568/1). Role: Researcher co-Investigator.
Brief summary: Food webs have improved dramatically in quality over the last 20 years. From dots representing species joined by lines of interactions they have become fully quantified and with new theoretical foundations. Entire new network industries such as pollination networks and seed dispersal networks have become well established in the literature. However, the vast majority of terrestrial webs produced over the last 20 years are both guild-specific and habitat-specific, because ecologists (quite sensibly) delimit their networks in order to make the job of network construction tractable. In reality, all food webs host multiple guilds and transcend different habitats, and researchers are only just starting to link together multiple networks into networks of networks. Our aim is to determine how working at the wider scale of the landscape (defined as a mosaic of habitats) affects our understanding of the structure and functioning of ecological networks. Thus, are landscape webs simply the sum of their habitat webs, or do they have emergent properties that cannot be predicted from component webs? Read more
Estimating recovery time of temperate forests after anthropogenic impacts along a complexity gradient
Funding: Spanish National Research Agency. 2016-2018. Role: Research collaborator
Brief summary: This empirical study studies the effect of mine abandonment on the recovery of ecological network complexity. Complexity is measured as the amount of links with different interaction strengths found in plant – mycorrhizal fungi – fungivorous insect networks. Using 14C and dendrochronology, we build a chronosequence of the last 300 years within one mining area in Navarre (Northern Spain) and construct the regional network. Species interactions strengths are estimated in laboratory and greenhouse experiments. We expect that as recovery progresses interaction networks become more structurally entangled but also more resilient to further disturbances. Read more
Ecosystem recovery in ancient Norse settlements of Greenland
Funding: National Geographic (2018-). Role: Research collaborator.
Brief summary: Experimental studies on ecosystem recovery are short term, but the recovery process may take much longer, as shown by paleo-ecological studies. In this project, we apply space-for-time substitutions to build chrono-sequences of the restoration of several components of biodiversity and functioning of degraded ecosystems. We use this approach to Old Norse settlements of South-west Greenland abandoned in c. 1450 AD. This pilot study aims to investigate changes in the structure and stability of plant-mycorrhizal-fungi networks in response to perturbations, in this case hay cropping, and after such perturbations ceased.
Does range expansion leave enemies behind? Butterfly pathogen and parasitoid communities in response to climate change
Funding: British Ecological Society (Large Research Grant 4970/6011). Role: Principal Investigator.
Brief summary: Global climate change is having widespread effects on species’ distributions, causing range shifts in many species to track suitable climatic conditions. These range shifts can alter community interactions in the expanded margins, such as the diversity of enemies that species encounter, which in turn will have further effects on species’ responses to climate change. To make predictions on biodiversity responses to global warming, it is thus important to take such community interactions into account. This project investigates how range shifts affect the enemy diversity (parasitoids and pathogens) of three UK butterflies that have expanded their range in the last decade in response to climate change. The interdisciplinary project, in collaboration with scientists and practitioners (Butterfly Conservation, Avon Wildlife Trust) brings together the fields of community ecology, climate change and metagenomics. The results from this study will increase our understanding of species and community responses to climate change, and can help inform nature conservation management and policy.
BIOSTASES (BIOdiversity, STAbility and sustainability in Spatial Ecological and social-ecological Systems)
Funding: European Research Council (European Union’s Horizon 2020). Role: Research collaborator.
Brief summary: The overarching goal is to develop a coherent body of new theory on the stability of ecosystems and coupled social–ecological systems and its relationships with biodiversity at multiple spatial scales that can inform empirical ecology, landscape management, and sustainable development. My role as collaborator is to contribute to advance our knowledge on the stability and synchrony of multiple ecosystem services in heterogeneous landscapes to provide new perspectives on the stability of food webs and on synergies and trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services across space. Read more
Viabilité et Adaptation des Ecosystèmes Productifs, Territoires et Ressources face aux Changements Globaux (AGROBIOSPHERE) 2013 (AGROBIOSE). 2014-2018
Funding: French National Research Agency. Role: Research collaborator.
Brief summary: The future of intensive farming systems in the context of global change is a considerable challenge: tomorrow’s agriculture will have to deliver innovative solutions that are acceptable to civil society and produce sufficient food, while integrating environmental objectives in a global context of increasing uncertainty. Read more
Feedbacks between biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services during the recovery process of restored ecosystems after anthropogenic disturbance
Funding: National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Centre (SESYNC) and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (i-Div). Role: Research collaborator.
Brief summary: As human extraction of resources grows and land uses change, ecosystem restoration is becoming a critical tool to both stem biodiversity loss and ensure flows of key ecosystem services into the future. However, the science of ecological restoration is relatively young. It has yet to fully take advantage of the potential for cross‐scale studies of restoration efforts to inform our understanding of ecosystem recovery, resilience, and functioning and to hone restoration decisions. Rigorous tests of restoration trajectories of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and cross‐scale investigations of strategies to maximize restoration outcomes, remain scarce. This research will investigate the pattern and timing of recovery of both biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services in ecosystems following large‐scale disturbances (agriculture, damming, eutrophication, hurricane/cyclones, invasive species, logging, oil spills, and overfishing). Read more
Ecological Restoration in Model Communities (FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2011 Marie Curie 301124)
Funding: European Commission (7th Framework Programme 2007-2012). Role: Principal Investigator.
Brief summary: The current, massive anthropogenic alteration of natural habitats is one of the main threats to global biodiversity. Ecological restoration is used to reverse this process, although the challenges involved in achieving this aim are widely recognised While there has been some progress in gathering data appropriate to a firmer scientific footing, restoration ecology still lacks a general theory. Developing a general theory is fundamental as without an underlying theory ecological restoration will remain site and context specific, general rules will remain elusive and there will be no conceptual framework to extend as restoration practice develops. Moreover, restoration projects provide important insights into the way that ecological communities are assembled and function. Read more
Models for ecosystem restoration
Funding: Spanish Ministry of Science & Education (EX2009-0037). 2010-2012. Role: Principal Investigator
Regional patterns and local processes: models of the structure and dynamics of the Mediterranean forest in response to Global Change (subproject of the general project ‘Ecological Interactions and Global Change in Mediterranean Forests’ [INTERBOS])
Funding: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [CGL2008-04503-C03-03/BOS]. 2009 – 2012. INIA, Cambridge University, Microsoft Research, UNED. Role: Research collaborator.
Dinámica del bosque mediterráneo en un escenario de cambio global [DINAMED]
Funding: Spanish Ministry of Science [CGL2005-05830-C03]). 2006-2009. Role: Research collaborator.
Basic & Applied Ecology Lab 