I am a PhD student seeking to understand the impacts of climate change on tropical biodiversity. I study climate change from the lens of population dynamics. My studies take place in tropical mountains, considered natural laboratories for studying climate change. Since elevation represents a natural thermal gradient across the distribution of montane species, these ecosystems are the ideal scenario for studying rapid climate-driven population changes in sensitive species. My current research focuses on the rainforest ringtail possum community endemic to the Australian Wet Tropics.

Current projects

1. An age-structure population model for rainforest ringtail possums.

We aim to understand the spatial variation in the population structure of rainforest ringtail possums and the process that governs this variability. In this project, we are constructing an age-structure population model using three years of abundance (juveniles and adults) data across 32 sites in the Australian Wet Tropics. We established the study sites across the thermal (elevation) and geological (soil fertility) gradients to understand the interaction between the species’ thermal intolerance and site fertility. We expect to find a strong interaction between these variables, with fertile soil enabling a larger population size and a higher tolerance to heatwaves (allowing the species to persist at lower elevations in high-nutrient soils).

2. The resource-availability hypothesis in the Australian Wet Tropics.

We explore the spatial variation in foliage quality across different climatic, nutritional, and competitive gradients. Our primary interest is understanding the bottom-up effect that soil fertility and climate impose on plant growth and the derived quality of foliage for herbivores. First, we test the influence of foliage quality (nutritional value vs toxins) on apparent herbivory damage across our ecological and environmental gradients. We expect to find a strong correlation between soil fertility and foliage quality as per the resource-availability hypothesis. We then tested the ecological implications of this heterogeneous chemical landscape on the herbivory community. We predict a positive association between foliage quality and herbivore abundance.

3. Why are rainforest ringtail possums collapsing in the Australian Wet Tropics?

Conservation actions focused on alleviating the impact of climate change on populations need to be targeted and locally implemented. To do so, we need a very detailed understanding of the causes of population declines. We embark in an ambitious project to understand the impact of climate change on rainforest ringtail possum populations at a very fine scale. This project is the culmination of a long-term monitoring effort. We combine 32 years of abundance data across 32 sites distributed across thermal (elevation), nutritional (foliage quality / toxins), and geological gradient (soil fertility) with state-of-the-art population and biophysical models. We aim to undertand how the species interact with the environment hourly, and how climate change is inducing a deficit in water/energy balance. We expect to find the physiological causes of the collapse in population, and its relationship with the species survival and recruitment.

4. Plastic-induced mortality in marine turtles (led by Daniel Gonzalez-Paredes).

In this project, we study the impact of plastic ingestion on marine turtles on the coast of Uruguay. We investigate the correlation between plastic-induced mortality and the characteristics of the pieces found in marine turtles to identify lethal consumption thresholds.