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ECOA LAB RESEARCH
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RESEARCH
Our actions are aligned with the global agenda that addresses the world's main challenges
We carry out ecology and conservation work in various areas, from the Amazon rainforest to coral reefs, including laboratory experiments. Our work is based on the challenges posed by a rapidly changing world, where anthropogenic pressures on ecosystems are increasing.
Plastic pollution
Humanity is sailing outside the safe zone for the planetary boundary for pollutants (i.e. new entities), with plastic pollution playing a central role in this story. Plastic pollution is ubiquitous in every system on Earth. Plastic is also accumulating in living organisms, with its ingestion recorded for more than 1500 species, from zooplankton to elephants, from insects to whales, including humans. It is in this context of socio-environmental crisis that our laboratory's research activities take place, assessing the accumulation and flow of plastic in different ecosystems, trying to understand the causes and consequences of plastic ingestion, developing methodologies for assessing plastic pollution and working on the development of public policies to mitigate the problem.
Ecology in a fast-changing world
Ecology in a fast-changing world
We live in a rapidly changing world, where human activities are altering ecosystems in an intense and persistent way. In recent decades this process of landscape modification has intensified, and today we have more than 80% of the earth under multiple human impacts. In this context, we explore the relationships between ecological systems and human activities. We investigate how human-caused alterations, such as climate change, habitat degradation and loss, and pollution, affect ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity.
Biology and conservation of endangered species
The planet is experiencing a major loss of biodiversity, with more than a million species threatened with extinction and an average population decrease of 70% since the 1970s. Understanding the biology of endangered species is fundamental to developing more effective management and conservation strategies. Against this backdrop of rapid biodiversity loss and the urgent need to develop conservation strategies, we have developed projects aimed at providing knowledge about the biology of endangered species and evaluating the effectiveness of management and conservation strategies.