Arnald Marcer Batlle

I hold a Ph.D. in Terrestrial Ecology (2013), an M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences (2010), and a B.Sc. in Biology (1989) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, as well as a Master of Environmental Sciences from Yale University (1991). My career began in the private and public sectors, where I worked as an environmental writer, freelance consultant, and technical staff for the Catalan administration. I joined CREAF in 1995, progressing from research technician and project manager to my current role as research staff.

My professional trajectory spans technical and managerial roles in conservation and geospatial sciences, which informed my transition into broad-spectrum biodiversity research. Currently a member of the Environmental Change Ecology Group at CREAF, my research is organized across three interconnected pillars:

• Spatiotemporal Dynamics: Investigating the drivers of biodiversity patterns, with an emphasis on phenotypic and genetic variation under global change.
• Predictive Modeling: Developing methodologies to understand and forecast biodiversity responses to environmental shifts across space and time.
• Informatics & Tool Development: Building software for ecological research, conservation planning, and biodiversity data management.

These lines of inquiry bridge my interests in basic ecological research and technological innovation. To address these areas, I leverage three primary research systems — the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana, freshwater organisms, and digitized biodiversity records — to investigate biodiversity dynamics and the impacts of climate change. My work also focuses on data informatics, specifically the organization and standardization of biodiversity data and the development of software tools to support eco-evolutionary research.