Fields of interest/focus of work

• Patterns of biodiversity and the underlaying processes of evolution in marine invertebrates
• Taxonomy, systematics and biogeography in marine polychaetes  
• Biological invasions in marine ecosystems
• R programming

Research Description:

I work in ecology and evolutionary biology. I use diverse model taxa to understand the historical and ecological processes that have influenced the present-day diversity patterns. In this respect, I apply different statistical methods, (i.e., Bayesian methods, machine learning, null models, spatial statistics), to the analysis of large ecological databases. This approach allows the understanding of broad scale ecological patterns in species richness. On the other hand, I work in biological invasions. My interest is the study of ecological impacts of invasive/naturalized species on native biodiversity. Currently, I am interested to study the evolutionary relationships in pelagic and benthic polychaetes (Annelida) from southeastern Pacific Ocean through of using the molecular methods such as the DNA barcode and phylogenomics.