Ricardo Miguel Miguéns Cardoso Cadete P

Biography

"I am broadly interested in the relationships between species and their (changing) environment at multiple spatial and temporal scales. My primary goal is to undertake applied research in conservation biology that simultaneously addresses basic ecological questions. This has been the underlying rationale behind my recent research, which has been largely concerned with the mechanisms ruling the persistence and coexistence of spatially structured populations in heterogeneous environments. I am particularly interested in the interaction between habitat fragmentation and spatial (meta)population processes in species of conservation importance, and also in understanding how environmental change may influence interspecific interactions across space and time. I mostly employ experimental field and modelling approaches, and use mammalian species in intensively used agricultural landscapes as model-systems. During my PhD, I carryied out applied research focusing two threatened, patchily distributed vole species (the Cabrera and the southern water voles) living in highly fragmented Mediterranean farmland. In particular, I investigated the effects of local and landscape environmental factors on voles occurrence, abundance, and coexistence at their south-western distribution limit. I am also involved in a research project that aims to quantify and predict voles movements and extinction-colonisation dynamics in fragmented landscapes, based on non-invasive genetic sampling of vole faeces. One of our main future goals is to build links between ecological processes operating at small scales (local and landscape) and species distribution modelling at large (biogeographic) scales."

Research Interest

My current research includes studies addressing the paradigm of species coexistence in habitat-networks, integrating ideas from metapopulation theory, landscape ecology, and community ecology.