Borthagaray Peradotto, Ana Inés

Research interests

My research is focused on understanding the mechanisms that connect landscape structure with biodiversity patterns and functioning of ecological systems. By combining different statistical methods, null models and numerical simulations, we have made progress in the connection between landscape structure, biodiversity and stability/resilience of systems against various perturbations, considering the connection between empirical approaches and the theoretical framework.

Working area

Understanding the mechanisms that generate and maintain biodiversity is today a challenge in ecology, given the evident and growing environmental changes that the region and the world are experiencing. In this context, metacommunity ecology, landscape ecology and network theory have been consolidated as complementary theoretical frameworks to advance on these mechanisms. First, by achieving realistic representations of the landscape structure and quantitative estimates of community isolation. The second major contribution has been to combine classic local processes—i.e. biological interactions and environmental filters—with the effect of dispersion across the landscape. In this line, the explicit consideration of the landscape structure and its connection with the flow of individuals is key to advance in the understanding of the patterns of biodiversity, functioning and spatiotemporal stability of ecosystems.