General Research Interests

My research integrates multidisciplinary approaches aimed at the resolution of problems in Vertebrate Ecology and Conservation. This work relies on a wide range of collaborations in areas including ecological modelling, immunology, infectious diseases, island biogeography, molecular ecology, population genetics, population viability modelling and toxicology. It has led me to work on projects developed in Mediterranean environments and Euro-Siberian temperate forests in Europe, and in arid areas and steppes of Africa (Sahel), Asia (Kazhakstan), America (Patagonia, Baja California) and Australia as well as in coastal environments (South Atlantic) and oceanic islands (Socotra).

The main axis of my research focuses on the Population Ecology of Long-lived Birds. I am interested in those aspects of life-history strategies fundamental to the understanding of both the selective pressures limiting populations and the processes (density-dependent productivity, dispersal strategies, age-dependent survival, conspecific attraction) regulating their spatial and temporal dynamics. As a transversal axis relating all of these areas of research, a good part of my work falls within the realm of Conservation Biology of threatened vertebrates and systems. I look for scientific answers to current ‘hot topics’ such as the demographic effect of non-natural mortality (poisons, wind-farms) in long-lived birds, the repercussions of European policies on avian populations dependent on traditional agro-grazing systems and the effects of toxic compounds on avian populations and communities.