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Alejandro Martínez-Abraín

Profesor contratado doctor en la Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología, Área de Ecología, Universidade da Coruña

I grew up as a naturalist in the shade of a major wetland located close to the city of Valencia: the Albufera Nature Park. In 1993 I obtained a BSc (biology major and geology minor) at Acadia University (Nova Scotia, Canada). Back in Spain, I worked as wildlife manager at the above protected area for four years. After that I decided to go back to academia and got a Fulbright grant to perform a one-year research fellowship in the USA, under the supervision of Dr. Robert E. Ricklefs (University of Missouri-St. Louis). After completing a graduate certificate on tropical ecology and conservation at UMSL I entered a graduate program at Universitat de Barcelona in 2000, where I completed a PhD in 2003, under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Oro. My PhD dissertation dealt with population ecology applied to the conservation of seabirds in small islets located along the Valencian region, and was funded by a LIFE project (EU-Generalitat Valenciana). I did four years of post-doctoral work within a second LIFE Project (same research topics, same funders), and at the same time acted as an adviser for the regional environmental authorities. In 2008 I got a three-year JAE-doc post-doctoral contract from CSIC and joined the Oro’s lab at the IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB) to study the dynamics of small vertebrate populations. In 2011 I got a 5-year Parga-Pondal research contract (Xunta de Galicia), and also started teaching ecology at Universidade da Coruña (UDC). I got a permanent position at UDC as a senior lecturer in ecology in 2021 (10 years after my Parga-Pondal contract and 20 years after the onset of my pre-doctoral work). I have carried out research sabbaticals in California, England, Wales, Mexico and the Canary Islands. My current research interests spin around the ecological consequences of human depopulation of rural areas in Europe and around the world, including changes in distribution, abundance and behaviour of formerly refuged wildlife and plants. I consider myself a generalist ecologist with wide interests regarding study topics, taxa, and ecosystems. I search for ecological pattern in the biosphere and I try to understand how it generated via evolutionary thinking.

Experience

  • –present
    PROFESOR CONTRATADO-DOCTOR EN LA FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS, DEPARTAMENTO DE BIOLOGÍA, ÁREA DE ECOLOGÍA, Universidade da Coruña

Education

  • 2003 
    UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA, DOCTOR EN BIOLOGÍA/ECOLOGÍA DE POBLACIONES