Pedro Jordano, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC) and professor at the University of Seville, will give a lecture on the impact of extinct megafauna on ecological networks, as part of the XIII Peregrí Casanova Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology Memorial The talk, “Megafauna in ecological networks: the ghost of extinct interactions”, will be held on Wednesday February 28 at 1 pm in the Charles Darwin room of the Burjassot-Paterna campus of the University of Valencia.

Jordano will explain the role and efficiency of the Pleistocene megafauna herbivores, now extinct, for the dispersal of plants. It will describe recent approaches to use morphological and ecophysiological allometries to estimate quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the seed dispersal services likely provided by this extinct megafauna. Allometry is the growth ratio between homologous parts of two organisms or of the same organism at different ages.

With the XIII Peregrí Casanova Memorial, tribute is paid to someone who was a full professor at the University of Valencia and taught for more than 40 years at the institution. He had a great influence in the spread of evolutionism in Valencia and in 1909 he participated prominently in the tribute that the medical students paid to Darwin on the anniversary of his death.

The lecture has been jointly organised by the Faculty of Biological Sciences, the Cavanilles University Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, and the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+I) of the University of Valencia. The Ministry of Science and Innovation and FECYT (Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) are also collaborating.