Pablo TEDESCO

Identifying the patterns in the structure and dynamics in aquatic communities and populations, and understanding the involved mechanisms, regroup the ecological topics that have guided my research. The main target of my research is focused on the knowledge of the current and historical environmental factors that explain the spatial and temporal distribution of freshwater fish and macroinvertebrate communities in tropical and temperate regions as a function of their biological traits and following a multi-scale approach: between-continents, between drainages basins and within drainage basins, and historical, inter-annual and seasonal. From a ‘fundamental’ point of view, my recent works focus on the mechanisms responsible for diversity patterns (speciation, extinction, dispersal) by including evolutionary approaches to the above ecological framework (phylogeny trees, fossil record, geomorphology of drainage basins). From an ‘applied’ point of view, I am also interested in evaluating the effects of environmental perturbations related to human activities on the vulnerability of species. These approaches are feasible thanks to the availability, but also my implication on the development of large databases. Five broad axes can regroup my research activities: (1) Patterns of aquatic diversity a large spatial scale and the implication of current and environmental drivers; (2) Evaluating the influence of local, regional and global environmental factors, seen as habitat constraints, on life history traits in aquatic communities and species; (3) The influence of climatic variability on the temporal dynamic of populations; (4) The evolutionary processes (diversification, speciation, extinction) implied in the current patterns of diversity; (5) The effects of human perturbations related to climate change, invasive species, habitat destruction and fragmentation of aquatic communities and species.