Yolanda Melero Cavero
I am an Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona and a researcher at CREAF.
The overall goal of my research is to understand and quantify how individual heterogeneity and the adaptive responses of organisms modulate population dynamics under global change, and how these dynamics in turn affect communities. With the population as the central link, my work integrates different levels of organisation: the individual (phenotypic variation and adaptation), populations (population and metapopulation dynamics, local-scale distributional shifts) and communities (composition and stability). Using mainly butterflies as a study system, and through the phenotype–population–community axis, I focus on two main components of global change:
- Climate change: I study how warming and extreme climatic events affect individual phenotypes, the dynamics and distribution of populations, and the composition and stability of communities.
- Urbanisation: I study the effects of urban areas on species' traits and phenotypes, and how these translate into population persistence and viability. I also analyse metapopulation dynamics in urban areas. In this context, I am the principal investigator and the co-coordinator of the urban Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (uBMS), the butterfly monitoring programme in urban parks and gardens.
Previously, I studied the role of extreme climatic events in population dynamics and species adaptations at the University of Reading (Marie Skłodowska-Curie project H2020-MSCA-IF-2017 795890 EXTINCT). I also worked on behavioural ecology and population dynamics at the University of Barcelona, and on metapopulation dynamics at low densities (compensation and Allee effects) at the University of Aberdeen (Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF 300288, DEPENSATION project).
