Menu Close

Francisco Valera Hernández

Científico titular de EEZA - CSIC especializado en Interacciones ecológicas entre organismos y entre éstos y su hábitat.

I began my career at the University (Granada and Jaén) with a pre-doctoral fellowship by the Ministry of Education and Science (1988) and a postdoctoral fellowship by the University of Granada's own Plan (1992). I worked as an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the Universities of Granada and Jaén for three years (1992-1995). I got a second postdoctoral fellowship by the Ministry of Education and Science, which I developed at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Comparative Ethology (Austrian Academy of Sciences). I joined the CSIC (MNCN) with a contract associated to a project in 2001. In 2003 I simultaneously obtained a Ramón y Cajal contract and a contract of the Program of Aids for the Return of Researchers of the Junta de Andalucía. I became a Permanent Researcher at the CSIC in 2005. I have five “Componente por Méritos Investigadores del Complemento Específico (quinquenios)” (1988-1992, 1993-1998, 2000-2004, 2005-2009 and 2010-2014) and four “Six-year period Research Activity Evaluation” (sexenios) (1989-1994, 1995-2002, 2003- 2008 and 2009-2014).

I have been in charge of the research team Ecology, Morphology and Conservation of the Andalusian Research Group Network from 2008 until today. I have been responsible for the Associated Unit Ecology and Parasitic Immunology (EEZA-Department of Animal Health of the University of Murcia) from 2009 to 2014. I have been Director of the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas from June 2010 to May 2014.

I have participated as a project evaluator for the National Science Foundation (NSF-USA), the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF), the National Research and Development Agency of Slovakia, the Ben-Gurion University, ANEP and the Agencia de la Calidad del Sistema Universitario de Castilla y León. I have been part of the Comisión Evaluadora de la Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación for the evaluation of research projects submitted to the 2015, "Excellence" and "Challenges" calls of the Plan Estatal 2013-2016.

I am co-author of 95 papers collected in the Web of Science Core Collection. I have participated in 11 research projects financed through competitive calls, the most recent being a LIFE project (one of the two obtained in Spain in the category Biodiversity in 2015).

My research activity has focused on the study of interactions between organisms considering: i) a wide range of interactions (competition, predation, seed dispersal, pollination, parasitism); ii) interactions at various levels of organization (between individuals, between populations and between species) and in various systems (animal-animal, animal-plant, plant-plant); iii) the effect of the environment on the outcome of the interactions; iv) evolutionary processes; v) the consequences of interactions on biodiversity conservation.

This variety of approaches seeks to understand the ecological and evolutionary consequences of interactions among organisms via their effects on the variability in reproductive success.

My main working lines are:
- Coevolution: processes of intersexual selection and intersexual conflict.
- The role of interactions among organisms on the regulation of populations.
- Influence of ecological factors on the results of interactions.
- Interactions and biodiversity conservation.

My future research lines are framed in the study of parasite-host-environmental interactions, with special interest in the effect of macro and microclimate.

Experience

  • 2000–2019
    Científico Titular, especializado en Interacciones ecológicas entre organismos y entre éstos y su hábitat, Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (EEZA-CSIC)

Education

  •  
    Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (EEZA-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), Doctor en Ciencias Biológicas