My research lines are the following:

To achieve this goal, my research focuses on the effect of environmental changes on the structure of communities (vascular plants, biological soil crust and/or microorganisms), and how these changes ultimately affect the functioning of the ecosystem, which requires the evaluation of the functional features of the species involved. Currently my work deals with different study scales: individual, community and ecosystem levels, and I am working using observational and experimental approaches.


To achieve this aim, we are using globally available long-term datasets (78 locations with ~8000 permanent semi-natural vegetation plots, sampled for at least 6 years; which we call database LOTVS, LOng Term Vegetation Sampling). We use this database to answer different ecological questions, for instance, we evaluate: i) the interplay between synchrony and richness on community stability, ii) the links between the temporal stability of species populations and the species’ functional traits, and iii) the relation between changes in community functional structure among years and community stability.