CREAF Talk with Isabel Donoso - "Functional ecology in a changing world: understanding global change impacts on species interactions"

TITLE: "Functional ecology in a changing world: understanding global change impacts on species interactions"

DATE: Thursday, 12th December 2024.

TIME & FORMAT: form 12 to 1pm CET - In-person and online.

Seminars will combine in-person and online formats (CREAF, Sala Graus II, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) but in all cases, talks will be always streamed (not recorded), so they can be followed online.

HOW TO CONNECT: direct link to the conference.

SUMMARY OF THE WORKSHOP:

Global biodiversity is facing unprecedented human impacts. Since biodiversity underpins essential ecosystem functions like pollination and seed dispersal, it is crucial to understand how biodiversity loss alters ecosystem functioning. Traditionally, biodiversity has been measured through species richness, but a community-level approach that emphasizes the components directly linked to ecosystem functions is needed. In recent years, an increasing effort has been oriented to the study of ecological networks (i.e., assemblages of species connected by ecological relationships). Despite these advances, we are still far from fully understanding ecological networks from a functional perspective. Trait-based approaches, focusing on species characteristics that drive their interactions, could offer valuable insights into how global change alters these networks. 

In this talk, Donoso will present findings from her past and ongoing research that aimed to: 1) understand biotic interactions and the structure of mutualistic networks, 2) link biodiversity and community structure to ecosystem functions, with a focus on seed dispersal, and 3) understand and develop future scenarios of communities and functions under different human pressures such as defaunation, invasive species and climate change. This research spans diverse ecosystems -from temperate to tropical forests- applying empirical, theoretical and advanced modelling approaches to large datasets and involved collaborations with international researchers. To conclude, she will introduce an ongoing research project in Santa Cruz (Galapagos islands), that integrates species interactions into an ecosystem restoration experiment. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Isa Donoso holds a BSc in Environmental Science from University of Basque Country (UPV-EHU) and an MSc in Global Change (UIMP-CSIC). In 2017, she completed her PhD in Ecology at the University of Oviedo. She has held different postdoctoral positions, supported by highly competitive funding programs such as the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Senckenberg, Germany) and a Marie Sklodowaska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (CSIC-UIB), where she worked in the Terrestial Ecology Lab led by Prof. Anna Traveset. Since July 2024, she is an Ikerbasque Research fellow at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (Bc3), where she is in the process of establishing her own research group.

Isa’s research focuses on community ecology, global change, ecological networks and functional ecology. The main goal of her research line to understand the effects of plant-animal interactions on ecosystem functioning and how these interactions respond to different anthropogenic impacts.