Eric Allan
Professor and head of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services group at IPS-UNIBE.
Google Scholar – Personal website – Institutional profile
Eric and I are working on the PaNDiv experiment, that he leads in Bern, trying to disentangle the mechanisms by which coexistence and, thereby, biodiversity is maintained, focusing on the effects of nitrogen deposition and pathogens (see Research for details).
Ignasi (Nacho) Bartomeus
“Ramón y Cajal” fellow at EBD-CSIC
Google Scholar – Personal website – @iBartomeus
Nacho and I are collaborating on the project at Finca Caracoles. We are interested in the structure of complex networks and how it shapes species coexistence (see Research).
Nicolas Gross
Researcher at INRA UREP in Clermont-Ferrand
Google Scholar – @NicolasPGross
With Nico Gross, we are collaborating on a project to understand which is the relative contribution to plant species coexistence of plant-herbivore network structure (connectance, nestedness, modularity) vs. the variability of the interaction strength of the different herbivores. We are taking advantage of a wonderful experiment that Nico’s groups carried out in Chizé (FR), in which they modified the functional diversity of 6 grasshopper species and monitored plant performance for two years.
Nicolas Fanin
Researcher CR2 at INRA Centre de Bordeaux Aquitaine
Google Scholar – @nicolasfanin
Nico Fanin is interested in microbial ecology, soil biogeochemical processes and their overall influence on ecosystem functioning. We are currently collaborating on a project in the Caracoles (Doñana) salt marsh where, together with Oscar Godoy and Nacho Bartomeus, we attempt to include plant mycorrhiza on models predicting multitrophic plant species coexistence.
Xoaquín Moreira
Google Scholar – Personal website – @xMoreira2
Xoaquín works on a topic that I find fascinating, plant communication. Together, we are interested in understanding how plants communicate in response so specific hazards (herbivores, pathogens) and, particularly, how this affects plants’ ability to coexist.
María J. (Chus) I. Briones
Full professor at Universidade de Vigo
Google Scholar
Chus, her PhD student Raquel Juan-Ovejero, and I have been collaborating since my very first beginning in science (not so much time ago, though). I developed my BSc and MSc thesis under her supervision, working on peatlands from the NW of Spain, first uncovering the huge diversity of soil fauna (specially microarthropods) and second trying to reveal which factors are the most relevant triggering carbon losses from these global reservoirs.
Carol M. Frost
Assistant professor at the University of Alberta
Institutional profile – ResearchGate
Carol and I have been collaborating since I went to Umeå for my Erasmus+ Internship. She was working on how the invasive fire ant (Wasmannia aeropunctata) affects the biodiversity and functioning of the rainforest at New Caledonia, and I identified the litter fauna from her samples for this project.