Exploring different facets of macroecological research in an age of big data: trends, gaps and opportunities

The traditional goal of macroecology is explain biodiversity patterns at large temporal and spatial scales. However, the profound impacts of anthropogenic global changes promoted a shift towards a more applied discipline. In this talk, Fernanda Alves-Martins will explore challenges and opportunities that macroecology face in view of the massive volume of environmental and biodiversity databases that are freely available. She will share the results of studies focused on several biological groups, including insects, birds and plants, conducted in Neotropics, North America and Africa. The talk will highlight methods and approaches to integrate and data from different sources and how they can be used to solve theoretical and applied questions in macroecological research.

Fernanda Alves-Martins is an ecologist interested in understanding the determinants of biodiversity at local and regional scales. She is keenly interested in exploring how the impacts of global change on biodiversity can be predicted and mitigated. In her research, Fernanda integrates and analyses data from field surveys, global biodiversity databases, and environmental information extract from remote sensing. Fernanda holds a PhD on ecology and evolution from the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil (2016), where she investigated drivers of species diversity of neotropical odonate. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the Natural Science Museum (2017), and University of Alcalá (2020), both in Spain. Currently, Fernanda is part of the TROPIBIO project based in CIBIO-InBIO, Portugal.

[Host: Richard James Ladle, Applied Ecology - APPLECOL]


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