Mariana Munguía - Research

PhD student jointly funded by the BIOIMPACTO project and by the National Autonoma University of Mexico (UNAM)

In my research I seek to increase understanding of the determinants of species geographic distributions (GD), in particular their responses to current and past environmental changes. I am interested in studying the factors that cause expansions and contractions of species GD, with consequent changes in the community composition. I start from the assumption that the limiting factors of the distributions of species vary between species and sometimes differ across the boundaries of a given species’ range. However, I also assume that one of the most important factors explaining the GD of terrestrial species, at large scales, are climate and the continental drift. Currently, I am interested in exploring links between ecological and historical biogeography because this could help understanding the dynamics of species ranges. The processes of extinctions and invasion could be enlightened if the climate perspective was seen through time. My research will focus particularly on species responses to climate during the Miocene-Pleistoscene period in the American Biotic Interchange.

I have also been working with ecological niche models to explore the potential level of species representation in conservation areas’ network. This research has been carried out in one of the most human impacted regions of Mexico, which has also a high diversity of ecosystems, i.e., the Transvolcanic belt, a Neartic-Neotropical transition region. We refined the quality of species’ GD data detecting enabling us to detect patterns of representativeness of species in conservation areas. These results were associated with their geographic position along the region and the kind of physiographical sites (volcanoes) where some endemic mammals persist. We also identified potential corridors between conservation areas that could be established to fill some of the gaps detected and allows dispersal between conservation areas. The method we developed is not specific to the studied region and could be applied to other regions with high endemism, where beta diversity and complementarity have an important role to play in terms of the location of conservation areas.

I have also a strong interest to clarify the meaning of beta diversity patterns and scaling implication in local and regional patterns between four vertebrate groups (amphibia, reptilia, aves and mammalia). Furthermore I am interested in investigating the role that geological and physiographical changes have had on differentiation of ecological niche vs. niche conservatism that underly speciation patterns.