Fitxa persona

Dr. Francesc Mesquita Joanes is a full professor of Ecology at the University of Valencia, and head of the lab of Ecology and Biogeography of Aquatic Systems at the "Cavanilles" Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology. He obtained an extraordinary PhD award with a thesis on population and community ecology of freshwater ostracods, supervised by professors M. R. Miracle and A. Sanz and defended in 1998. After a postdoctoral stay over a year at the Dep. of Geography, University of Hull (UK), where he worked with Huw I. Griffiths on ostracod palaeoecological applications, he obtained an assistant professorship post in Ecology at the University of Valencia in 2000 (later promoted to associate professor in 2003 and to full professor in 2022), where he has been teaching topics related to Ecology, Biogeography and Biodiversity, both at the undergraduate level and to master students. He has participated in or has coordinated multidisciplinary projects and has supervised PhD theses on palaeoecology and environmental change, evolutionary ecology of reproductive strategies (sexual/asexual), biological invasions, applied limnology, and diversity, conservation, ecophysiology and taxonomy of freshwater ostracods. Regarding his international achievements, he has participated as the Spanish coordinator in the EU-funded project SEXASEX, directed by K. Martens (Belgium), organized a pan-European sampling campaign and published several articles. He has also collaborated in a NERC (UK) project on genomic responses to climate change, with R. Snook, R. Butlin y K. Gaston, and in several other recent EU-funded projects coordinated by Prof. Antonio Camacho. Furthermore, he has done research stays longer than a month in several research organizations in the UK, Belgium, Japan, Argentina, Canada and Thailand, and has been an invited speaker in several international symposia. At present he is principal investigator of a research project funded by the Spanish Government (AEI), on the spatial scale effects on biodiversity in all groups of organisms in aquatic systems, focusing on ricefields, with co-PI M.T. Antón-Pardo, and also participating F. Palero and R. Ortells. Prior to this, he was PI of other AEI research project on the study of metacommunity ecology of aquatic systems or stress effects of salinity and temperature in crustacean metabolism. In the metacommunity framework he has studied temporary ponds in Costa Rica and Nicaragua (with C. Rojo, J. Armengol, M. Sasa and J. Monrós), shallow salt lakes (with A. Camacho), interdune ponds (with J. Armengol and J. Rueda) and Thai water bodies (with S. Savatenalinton). As a result of his last research projects as PI, on aquatic biodiversity and metacommunity ecology, he published, in collaboration with outstanding researchers including Anne Magurran (Univ. East Anglia), Robert D. Holt (Univ. Florida) or Pedro Peres-Neto (Concordia Univ.) several articles in prestigious journals such as Ecology and Limnology & Oceanography, and book chapter reviews on tropical wetland metacommunities or ostracod ecology and biodiversity.