LAB Group
Anna Traveset
Anna received her BS in Biology from the University of Barcelona and her PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the study of plant-animal interactions in terrestrial ecosystems, which she examines both from an ecological and an evolutionary perspective. She is especially interested in (1) determining to what extent such biotic interactions are important in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and (2) assessing how such interactions are threatened by different drivers of global change, mostly alien invasive species and global warming. She works mostly on insular ecosystems, although she also collaborates with colleagues doing research in continental areas.
CV
@AnnaTraveset
Current PhD Students
Pau Colom
Graduated in Environmental Sciences (Universitat de Girona) and Master in Terrestrial Ecology and Biodiversity Management (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). He began his PhD in 2018 at the LAB which focuses on the study of the butterfly communities in the Balearic Islands. In particular, his research integrates demographic and phenological analyses and the study of butterfly-plant interaction dynamics with a biogeographic perspective and in a global change scenario. He participates in national (DEPICT) and local (BARRANCS and STOP-INVAS) research projects and collaborate in a butterfly citizen science project (CBMS).
Raquel Muñoz
Raquel was graduated in Biology (University of Murcia, Spain) and studied a master's degree in Biodiversity and Conservation Biology (UPO-EBD-CSIC, Sevilla, Spain). Currently, she is doing her PhD in our lab, funded by the Spanish government (FPU grant). Her goal is to unravel the joint impact of two invasive herbivores, the Neotropical moth Paysandisia archon and dense goat populations, on the interactions between the endemic Mediterranean dwarf palm and subsequent animal associates (pollinators, seed dispersers, seed predators, herbivores).
Laura Gomez
Laura graduated in biology at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia and studied her master in Biodiversity and Collection Management at the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. She joined our lab to pursue her PhD, framed under the IslandLife project, funded by the European Research Council (ECR). Specifically, her goal is to study the connection between ecosystem functioning and pollination networks. She aims to do this by studying 1) the impact of rats on pollination networks and 2) how diurnal and nocturnal pollination networks are integrated. She will develop her research on the Seychelles archipelago.
Current Post-docs
Sandra Hervías
Her main research interest is in studying species interactions on islands to frame conservation problems. Specifically, she investigates the causes and consequences of global changes, such as the impact of biological invasions or the loss of a keystone species, on important ecosystem functions, particularly seed-dispersal and pollination. Currently, she works as a postdoc at IMEDEA for the project ISLET-FOOD WEBS. It aims at studying the food web structure of small island communities and identifying the tipping point beyond which ecosystem functioning can collapse due to a disturbance.
Isa Donoso
Isa is a community ecologist working at the interface of empirical and theoretical ecology. Her main research interest is to understand the effect of plant-animal interactions on ecosystem functioning under anthropogenic impacts, such as habitat loss and species defaunation. After three years as a Humboldt fellow in Germany, she has joined IMEDEA with a postdoc fellowship of the Balearic Government to evaluate the consequences of climate change for seed dispersal in insular plant communities. Her work combines empirical trait-based studies of seed-dispersal networks, with extinction models to develop potential future scenarios of ecological communities and ecosystem functions. As part of the research team of the project DEPICT, she will also work on deciphering island ecological complexity and its response to global change.
Marta Quitián
She is interested in how environmental factors shape species interactions and hence ecosystem dynamics. She study the impact of human activities on ecosystem functions emerging from mutualistic plant-animal interactions. Using ecological network analysis and trait-based approaches (i.e. functional diversity indices and functional trait space projections), she detect disruptions on ecosystem functioning. In the past, she focused on seed dispersal and investigated the impact of habitat fragmentation on mutualistic interactions among frugivorous birds and fruiting plants across an elevational gradient in a tropical mountain forest of Ecuador. Her current research focuses on pollination and employs ecological network analysis to assess the impact of habitat loss and invasive species on the pollination networks of the remote Ogasawara islands in Japan.
Alba Costa
Alba is an ecologist interested in understanding the effects of anthropogenic stressors on mutualistic and antagonistic species interactions at the community level. More specifically, she studies how invasive species and global change influence species-interaction networks on islands with the aim of disentangling how to achieve an effective restoration of native biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. After finishing her PhD at the University of Exeter, she has joined the IMEDEA as a postdoc within the European Research Council (ERC) project IslandLife to understand the complexity of ecological interactions on islands and evaluate their vulnerability to global change.
Research assistants
Pau Enric Serra
He is committed to the research of biodiversity conservation and its divulgation. He is developing a new protocol for automatic census of plant-animal interactions based on deep learning and cameras with an optimal optic for recording small animals on flowers. He also is the screenwriter of the short documentary film Bee or not to be (click to see the trailer), which has been produced among a grant from Fundación General del CSIC, the autonomic television from the Balearic Islands (IB3-TV), this lab and the film company Far Visuals.
Raquel Gutierrez
She is a research assistant since 2008. She has performed several field campaigns around the world and has been contracted in different research institutes around Spain, such as IPNA-CSIC, IEO and IMEDEA.
Francisco Fuster
Currently as a field technician in this lab
BSc Biology. University of Balearic Islands, Mallorca, Spain
MSc. Conservation, Management and Restoration of Biodiversity. University of Balearic Islands, Spain.
PhD: Deeping in the plant-animal double mutualism and their importance on the opportunistic vertebrates as pollinators in insular ecosystems (2020)
Past Post-docs
Silvia Santamaría
Her research interest is to understand the ecological mechanisms underlying the structure of plant-pollinator networks. In particular, her research has focused on the evaluation of the effects of networks structure on their robustness, as well as on the functional interpretation of plant-pollinator networks structure in alpine plant communities. Currently, as a postdoc at IMEDEA, she collaborates in the BiodivErSA Project FUNgreen. This project assesses the functional response of pollinators to restoration of species-rich semi-natural grassldans in Europe.
Carlos Lara-Romero
Post-doc project: Determinants of Mediterranean high-mountain plan responses to global change. An integrative approach PDF
Gema Escribano
Post-doc project: Conservation of species and ecological interactions in a Global Change environment: implications for restoration. PDF
Beatriz Rumeu
During her postdoctoral stay at IMEDEA in 2018, Bea worked within "The Island Frugivory Project". Island biologists from around the world are involved in this project aimed at gathering and jointly analysing information about frugivory and seed dispersal on island systems. She is currently a JdC postdoc at UMIB (Unidad Mixta de Investigación en Biodiversidad) in Oviedo, Spain.
Juan Pedro González-Varó
Juanpe started collaborating with Anna in 2008, during his PhD. Together they worked on (i) differences in pollen limitation and inbreeding depression among individual plants; (ii) seed dispersal disruptions; and (iii) the importance of intraspecific variation for the establishment of “forbidden” ecological interactions. During his postdoctoral stay at the Terrestrial Ecology Group in 2018, he collated information on fruiting phenology and timing of bird migrations in European seed dispersal networks.
Valeria Paiaro
Valeria studied the pollination ecology and phenotypic selection patterns of two plant species occurring in Mallorca, the invasive Nicotiana glauca and the native Echium plantagineum, to compare them across their native and non-native range in Argentina, respectively.
Marta López-Dárias
Ecology of invasions: the case of the Barbary ground squirrel (Atlantoxerus getulus) in Fuerteventura Island (Canary Islands).
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
Ruben H. Heleno
Mutualistic networks in the Galápagos Islands. Direct and indirect impacts of invasive species on threatened plants. Click here to see one of the papers emerged from this project led by him.
Matthias Albrecht
Matthias studied how the presence of Carpobrotus flowers influences the reproductive success of pollinating bees, mainly in the Osmia genus. We co-supervised a Master Student, Margarita Ramis, who studied the competitive interactions between the invasive Oxalis pes-caprae and the native Diplotaxis erucoides. See the paper emerging from such master thesis here.
Amparo Lázaro
Ecological and phylogeographical aspects of the Mediterranean relict of the Buxus balearica. Post-doc project: Decreasing ecosystem services due to the loss of wild pollinators: natural systems and crops. Currently, she has a "Ramon y Cajal" contract at IMEDEA.
Carolina Morales
Carolina was in the lab during 2007, working on several projects, doing fieldwork on the reproductive biology of Leopoldia comosum and also carrying out two interesting reviews on the impact of invasive plants on the reproductive success of native ones. She is at Laboratorio Ecotono, CONYCET, Bariloche, Argentina.
Anna Jakobsson
Post-doc on the impact of Carpobrotus acinaciformis and Oxalis pes-caprae on the reproductive of native plants in Mallorca. Click here to see one of the articles product of her work in our lab.
Past PhD Students
Mohamad Abdallah
Mohamad is currently pursuing a Ph.D. program in Plant Biology. His thesis is a comparative study of coexisting native and non-native plant pairs based on physiological, ecological, and chemical disciplines, ongoing between the research group on Plant Biology Under Mediterranean Conditions (UIB) and the Global Change research group (IMEDEA (UIB - CSIC)). He is originally an Agricultural Engineer, holding a Master’s in plant production from the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon.
Francisco Fuster
BSc Biology. University of Balearic Islands, Mallorca, Spain
MSc. Conservation, Management and Restoration of Biodiversity. University of Balearic Islands, Spain.
PhD: Deeping in the plant-animal double mutualism and their importance on the opportunistic vertebrates as pollinators in insular ecosystems (2020)
Julia Jaca
BSc Biology. University Autónoma de Madrid, Spain MSc. Universidad Pablo Olavide, Sevilla, Spain.
PhD: Opportunistic vertebrates as mediators of the reproductive success of two Canarian endemic plants (2020)
Jaume Seguí
PhD: Vulnerability to global change of the Viola genus in mountain ecosystems. (2017)
Cristina Tur
PhD: Plant-pollinator networks incorporating individual variation and functional information. (2015)
Ana Lázaro-Nogal
PhD: Respuestas fenotípicas de plantas leñosas mediterráneas al cambio climático y a la fragmentación de hábitats: plasticidad fenotípica y diferenciación genética interpoblacional. (2014)
Rocío Castro
PhD: Emerging patterns of pollination networks in different coastal communities in the Balearic and Canary Islands. (2014)
Aaron Gónzalez-Castro
PhD: Redes de dispersión insulares. Mecanismos determinantes de su topología (2013)
Benigno Padrón
PhD: Plant-animal mutualistic networks in island ecosystems. Integration and impact of alien species. (2011)
David Pérez Padilla
PhD: Ecología trófica del alcaudón Lanius senador y su papel como dispersorsecundario de plantas (2009)
Mari Carmen de la Bandera
PhD: Biotic and abiotic factors that affect the heterocarpy in Thymelaea velutina. (2008)
Javier Rodríguez
PhD: Consequences of the disruption of plant-animal mutualistic networks in island ecosystems. The case of Daphne rodriguezii.(2007)
Eva Moragues
PhD: Impact of the invasive species Carpobrotus edulis on vegetation communities in the dune systems of the Baleares. (2006)
Amparo Lázaro
PhD: Factores ecológicos implicados en la distribución y abundancia de dos especies de Buxus con distinto grado de fragmentación. Viabilidad y diferenciación genética de poblaciones fragmentadas. (2005).
Javier Gulías
PhD: Ecophysiological comparison of two species of Rhamnaceae, Rhamnus alaternus and R. ludovici-salvatoris. (2004)
Past visiting scientists
Pedro Bergamo
Stay at PhD student. (October 2018-September 2019)
His investigations are focused on plant-pollinator interactions in tropical systems since his undergraduate studies, at the University of Campinas. He is for a research stay of his PhD at IMEDEA in Anna Traveset's group. Currently, he is applying the coexistence theory to understand the dynamics of a tropical mountaintop plant-pollinator community and network tools to investigate how pollination interactions affect plant fitness of a Mallorca dune ecosystem.
Joisiane Mendes
Stay at PhD student. (November 2018-September 2019)
Her investigations are focused on frugivorous fishes and the implications of overfishing in the diversity of plants in Neotropical floodplain. Joisiane is visiting our lab this year to investigate the effects of cryptic function loss of frugivorous fishes on seed dispersal and predation networks in Neotropical floodplain.
Agustin Sáez
He is a Biologist specialized in the topic of applied pollination ecology. His investigations are focused on the management of bees and the agricultural environment to improve pollination and food production in pollinator dependent crops. Agustin is a Research Assistant at the CONICET – National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina, and he is visiting Anna’s Lab. to investigate almond pollination.
Haruko Ando
Stay at Post doct. (April 2021-September 2021)
She finished the PhD in the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Japan, and now working as a researcher in the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan. Her research interests are adaptation of birds in island environment and consequent ecological role of them. She mainly work on oceanic islands in Japan using genetics and field work approaches to answer above questions. In Spain, she stayed in Canary Islands and Balearic Islands for one year in total to conduct seed dispersal studies about the birds which are not common in mainland as seed dispersers. In IMEDEA, she evaluated the seed dispersal pattern of olives by seagulls using the GPS tracking and retention time data.
Master Students
- Pau Enric Serra (2022) Automated pollinator monitoring system based on deep learning: application to identify pollinator functional groups. Univ. La Laguna
- Luz Thomann (2019) Papel de las gaviotas en la dispersión de semillas de Olea europaea L. en la región mediterránea Ibero-balear. Univ. Salamanca
- Raquel Muñoz Gallego (2018) Alien species as seed dispersal rescuers of the endemic Mediterranean palm Chamaerops humilis L. in Mallorca (Balearic Islands) Univ. Pablo Olavide
- Elisabeth Guasp (2017) Biología reproductiva del endemismo balear Chaenorrhinum origanifolium. Univ. Autónoma de Barcelona
- Salvador Ramos (2017) Polinización por vertebrados en la isla de Cabrera, Baleares. Univ. La Laguna
- Javier Ruiz Guzmán (2016) Modelando el ataque del lepidóptero invasor Paysandisia archon en el endemismo Mediterráneo Chamaerops humilis en Mallorca. Univ. Pablo Olavide
- Rafel Beltrán Gómez (2016) El servicio ecosistémico de la polinización y uso de las redes de interacción como herramienta útil para la gestión de ecosistemas. Univ. Granada
- Isabel Donoso Cuadrado (2012) Testing the effect of climate change on temporal mismatching in plant-butterfly interactions: a modeling approach. Univ. Illes Balears
- Margarita Ramis Escudero (2011) Impacto de la invasora Oxalis pes-caprae en la reproducción de la nativa Diplotaxis erucoides: papel de la escala espacial. Univ. Illes Balears
- Veriozka Vázquez (2011) Adaptación de la invasora Oxalis pes-caprae al cambio climático. Univ. Menéndez Pelayo
- Alicia Forner Sales (2010) Estado actual y previsión de la dinámica de las poblaciones de Rhamnus ludovici-salvatoris de las Islas Baleares frente al cambio climático. Univ. Menéndez Pelayo
- Rocío Castro-Urgal (2009) Estructura de redes mutualistas en ecosistemas insulares: variacion a diferentes escalas y mecanismos determinantes. Univ. Menéndez Pelayo
- Cristina Tur (2009) Efecto de la temperatura floral sobre la frecuencia de polinizadores a las plantas. El caso de Lantana camara. Univ. Menéndez Pelayo