2008-2013
‘Ramón y Cajal’ research fellow
Profile
I completed my MSc at the University of Barcelona (Spain) in 1999, and moved to the Metapopulation Research Group, University of Helsinki (Finland), where I have spent 10 years. With my PhD project on reserve-network selection and spatial population dynamics I brought a new research line to the group. After defending my thesis in 2003, I stayed in the group as a postdoc with the aim of further exploring some questions and to strengthen the young reserve-selection team. Currently, I am a ‘Ramón y Cajal’ research fellow within the BIOCHANGE Lab at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC) in Madrid.
I believe that collaboration is a key ingredient of good science, promoting multidisciplinary research. Therefore I am involved in a large number of projects, and interact with a large number of top scientist. I owe most of what I have learnt to them, and I hope that my students benefit and learn from a similar experience.
Another key step in my career has been to become a subject editor of Conservation Biology. This experience has offered me a great opportunity to have a broad view of the field, be continuously updated, and become critical with the scientific method.
I also enjoy doing field work in my spare time, assisting colleagues with interesting projects in interesting and challenging places.
Research
My education is as a theoretical ecologist, although my work is mostly on applied ecology and conservation. Besides developing theoretical models and methods to explore conceptual problems, I also work with empirical applications, dealing with a number of projects covering different spatial scales and taxa (see projects). During my PhD I developed reserve selection methods that incorporate species spatial population dynamics in different ways. Such methods represent a step forward towards the consideration of species persistence in reserve design. My current interest is to develop reserve selection methods that consider changes in the landscape that may affect species distributions (alone and in interaction with spatial population dynamics). Such landscape changes include succession, habitat loss, and climate change.
Selected five publications
Pressey, R.L., Cabeza, M., Watts, M.E., Cowling, R.M. and Wilson, K.A. (2007) Conservation planning in a changing world. TREE (in press)
Cabeza, M. and Moilanen, A. (2006) Replacement cost: A practical measure of site value for cost-effective reserve planning. Biol Cons 132: 336-342
Moilanen, A. and Cabeza, M. (2005) Variance and Uncertainty in the Expected Number of Occurrences in Reserve Selection. Cons Biol, 19: 1663-1667
Cabeza, M. (2003) Habitat loss and connectivity of reserve networks in probability approaches to reserve design. Ecol Let, 6: 665-672
Cabeza, M. and Moilanen, A. (2001). Design of reserve networks and the persistence of biodiversity. TREE, 16: 242-247.
