Adjunct Assistant Professor
About
My aim is to understand and predict the structure and dynamics of ecological networks, including their responses to perturbations
Affiliation
Center for the Studies of Complex Systems
Fields of study
Ecological networks, pollination ecology, food-web ecology, fisheries, eco-evolutionary dynamics, theoretical ecology.
General overview:
My lab studies the mechanisms behind the structure, dynamics, and function of complex ecological networks, at ecological and evolutionary scales; including their resilience to biodiversity loss, biological invasions, climate change, and exploitation by humans. This research focuses on pollination networks and food webs. I mainly use mathematical models and computational tools, but my lab also conducts field work to understand and predict the structure and function of pollination networks.
Specific areas of current research:
1. Pollination network ecology
I have developed a novel mathematical model that incorporates, for the first time, biological processes such as adaptive foraging and the dynamics of floral rewards and pollination services into the analysis of complex pollination networks (Valdovinos et al. 2013). I used that consumer- resource model to demonstrate how adaptive foraging of pollinators partitions the niches of plants and pollinators and stabilizes the dynamics of empirically structured networks, as well as, to predict field observations of pollinator foraging behavior (Valdovinos et al. 2016). I am currently using my model to evaluate the resistance, robustness and resilience of pollination systems to species invasions, as well as, the evolution of specialization and generalization in pollination systems. My lab also conducts field work at the Edwin S. George Reserve to compare the current plant-pollinator community with historic data, and use our network theory to explain the differences. I plan to conduct manipulative field experiments to parameterize, as well as, test the predictions of my theory.
2. Food web ecology and evolution
My lab is developing theory integrating pollination services into complex food-webs. This theory will address the importance of pollination services for the structure and function of the whole community, as well as, the effects of trophic interactions (herbivory and carnivory) on pollination networks. In a second project, we are analyzing the combined effects of speciation and invasion on the structure and dynamics of evolving food webs. For that, we are developing models of food webs that integrate evolutionary and ecological dynamics. The model starts with a small food web exhibiting the simplest ecological processes: birth, death, and consumption rates. Within these ecological dynamics, we simulate species invasions and speciation. We simulate speciation by allowing the offspring of existent species to randomly change/mutate some specific characteristics, which converts them in new species. These new species will survive or go extinct depending on the ecological context that they are subjected to: that is, which species are their predators and/or resources.
3. Application of food web theory to fisheries
Our society’s incapability of managing overfishing has been aggravated by the inefficiency of traditional methods used to determine exploitation rates based on single-species models. Our complex network approach to fisheries (Kuparinen et al. 2016) that considers all the species and interactions of the harvested ecosystem constitutes a powerful alternative to previous models. Our approach demonstrated how mechanisms underlying life-history changes (i.e., earlier maturation and decreased body size of fishes) that may arise as evolutionary responses to intensive, size-selective fishing can rapidly and continuously destabilize and degrade ecosystems even after fishing has ceased. We are currently extending our approach by incorporating environmental stochasticity into our Allometric Trophic Network model, and by using extensive empirical data from different parts of the world. A second project incorporates socio-economic processes that dynamically determine how fishing effort varies according to price and yield dynamics driven by market mechanisms.
Teaching
EEB 485: Population and Community Ecology
CMPLXSYS/EEB 435: Ecological Networks
Mentorship
My mentorship style is characterized for being very present in the development of my students. I encourage them to be intellectually independent but I also provide them solid advice and support in their conceptual and methodological decisions and procedures. My main goal is to help my mentees to rigorously and passionately answer big questions in Ecology. I also actively promote collaboration among the people of my lab through lab meetings, working groups, reading seminars, programming sessions, etc., which I find key for the academic success of everybody in the group.
Professional background
Postdoctoral Researcher at Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, 2014-2017
Research Assistant at Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab, Berkeley, 2012-2013
Research visitor at Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Spain, 2012
