“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” ISAAC NEWTON.
My thesis consists in an aproximation to microbial ecology from theoretical ecology, taking into account biodiversity conservation. Microbial datasets allow us to test theoretical models that are difficult to analyse with large animals and plants. I started analysing several datasets: microbes in Swiss soils, lakes of the Pyrinees and saline ponds in Monegros, and phytoplankton in lake Zürich and several other swiss lakes. I aim to understand: 1) colonization-extinction dynamics in microbial communities, 2) the factors that influence microbial diversity at local and regional scales, and 3) the first principles that underlie the structure and dynamics of microbial communities.
However, I’m also interested in other themes as networks, variability in natural populations, individual-based models, evolution… I would like to understand when island biogeography applies as a general model, and the associated implications for conservation. It would be nice to build nested models starting from simple ones, as a way to overcome the tractability-complexity tradeoff that most models suffer.
Interests: microbial ecology, theoretical ecology, conservation, island biogeography, modelling, networks, variability, evolution.