• Speaker: Ana Payo, FPU Dpto. Biodiversidad y Conservación (IMEDEA).

Esporles, march 29, 2017. Natural populations are the product of a long history of coevolution of their constituents with the environment (May 2001).

However, humans have deeply transformed the planet causing regional and global effects and it is now clear that such changes are an important driving force on natural populations (Vitousek et al. 1997, Walther et al. 2002, Parmesan and Yohe 2003, Halpern et al. 2008).

In this context, under current scenarios of global change, questions such as how populations will cope to future perturbation regimes have become especially popular.

Particularly relevant in the context of ecological — and population — responses is the increased spatio-temporal heterogeneity through asymmetry in regional changes and increased frequency and intensity of extreme events (Walther et al. 2002, Schellnhuber 2006).

The overarching aim of my thesis was to assess the role of environmental variability and specially of perturbations in the population dynamics of social vertebrates.

For this to be meaningful, it was critical to assess population responses across broad scales of space (local-global) and time (9-30y).

Specifically, we assess how different drivers such as density dependence, food availability, extreme weather conditions, poisoning, presence of predators influence survival, dispersal and colonization patterns of the Yellow-legged  and Audouin's gull.

It was fun doing it, let me tell you about it!

Date and Time: Thursday, march 30, 11:30-12:30h

Place: IMEDEA Seminar Room

Font: IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB)