Island Biodiversity, Biogeography & Conservation - IBBC
Island Arthropod Macroecology

Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte

External Collaborator

Macroecology Taxonomy Araneae Macaronesia

I am an ecologist interested in the formation and shaping of biodiversity, and in developing tools to manage, preserve and educate about it. To achieve this, I combine approaches and methods from interconnected fields—community ecology and macroecology, evolutionary biology, biogeography, environmental science, conservation and citizen science.

Since I completed my Ph.D. in Ecology (Lincoln University, New Zealand), I have been involved in projects on diverse subjects with multiple research teams, either as a researcher or a postdoc: the interactions between microhabitat and community structure, phylogenetics and conservation management of New Zealand grassland spider communities; isolation and conservation genetics of the Chatham Island weevils; speciation and habitat adaptation to cave invertebrates (University of the Basque Country); the role of climate and functional traits on endemism (University of Barcelona); the effects of neutral and niche processes on community and population structure in temperate and tropical biomes, such as west European forests (University of Pau, Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Barcelona), the Tanzanian Eastern Arc Mountains (University of Copenhagen), Ecuadorian Amazonia (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Caribean mangroves (University of Cartagena); and climate change and sustainability (ICTA, Autonomous University of Barcelona). Also, I am leading several ongoing citizen/participatory science projects (University of Nottingham, University of the Azores, Natural History Museum of Toulouse) and I work as a science illustrator, creating images that summarise, explain in detail or educate about our (my collaborators as well as others) scientific discoveries and questions.

My research collaborations with CE3C and the IBBC group include the MACDIV project, which uses the Macaronesian islands as a model system and spiders as model organisms to understand how insular biodiversity is formed and maintained. To achieve our goal, we combine data on the taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic community structures and the spatial, historical and environmental factors that potentially shape them. Our findings are not only being relevant for theoretical knowledge—revealing mechanisms driving diversity patterns—but they also contribute to the EU BEST Indicator Essential Biodiversity Variables for Islands, the new IPBE platform and the Strategic Goal C of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2020 as defined in the CBD 2011-2020 Strategic Plan (see www.cbd.int).