2008
MACIS Post doctoral Research Fellow
Research interests
My research is focused on the integration of several biodiversity-related disciplines as biogeography, phylogenetics and macroecology. My point of view is that biodiversity patterns should be taken into account in order to optimize the taxonomic effort (i.e. where and how to search new taxa?) and, at the same time, taxonomic knowledge is essential to analyze the biodiversity patterns. For this reason, I consider that integrating a correct knowledge of biodiversity (taxonomy) and its spatial (biogeography), temporal (phylogeny) and environmental (macroecology) dimensions will generate our most complex and explicative hypotheses and theories.
I am mostly interested in the integration of beta diversity patterns in the central debate about large-scale gradients of biodiversity. The variation in community composition (beta diversity) has more biological significance than the variation in the number of species (i.e. two communities could have exactly the same number of species but completely different composition). Therefore, the assessment of such species turnover patterns will provide new evidence, allowing new approaches to biogeographical and macroecological questions.
Selected papers
1. Baselga A. 2008. Determinants of species richness, endemism and turnover in European longhorn beetles. Ecography 31: 263-271
2. Baselga A, Jiménez-Valverde A, Niccolini, G. 2007. A multiple-site similarity measure independent from richness. Biology Letters 3(6): 642-645
3. Baselga A. 2007. Disentangling distance decay of similarity from richness gradients: response to Soininen et al. 2007. Ecography 30: 838-841
4. Baselga A, Jiménez-Valverde A. 2007. Environmental and geographical determinants of beta diversity of leaf beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) in the Iberian Peninsula. Ecological Entomology 32: 312-318
5. Baselga A, Hortal J, Jiménez-Valverde A, Gómez JF, Lobo JM. 2007. Which leaf beetles have not yet been described? Determinants of the description of Western Palaearctic Aphthona species (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae). Biodiversity and Conservation 16(5): 1409-1421
A complete publication list is available here
