Pilar Hurtado
Departamental II – DII. 217
Area of Biodiversity and Conservation
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
c/ Tulipán s/n.
E-28933 Móstoles (Madrid)
Spain
Phone: +34 91 488 8288
Fax: +34 91 664 7490
E-mail: pilar hurtado at urjc.es
2011 – Degree in Biology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
2013 – MsC in Ecology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
2019 – Ph D Thesis, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid).
Ph D supervisors: Isabel Martínez Moreno, Gregorio Aragón Rubio, María Prieto Álvaro.
Title: «Incidence of some drivers of global change on epiphytic organisms: from populations to communities at multiple spatial scales».
In this project we intend to understand how epiphytic lichen communities are organized to predict ecosystem function and the responses of communities to two major drivers of global change, habitat fragmentation and climate change.
The main objective of the thesis is the detection of ecological ssembly rules in beech epiphytic lichen communities. To this end, we have two specific objectives:
Objective 1. To analyze how climate change will affect the relationship between the different components of phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic diversity of epiphytic communities in Fagus sylvatica forests along a climatic gradient in Europe (from Sweden to Spain and Italy).
Objective 2. To analyze how the degree of forest fragmentation may be affecting the relationship between the different components of phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic diversity of epiphytic communities in Fagus sylvatica forests and analyze the differences among beech forests at their environmental optimum vs their distribution limit.
Our starting hypothesis is that the epiphytic lichen communities in more adverse conditions (more southern and / or fragmented localities) will be poorer in species and have a reduced phylogenetic and functional diversity.
Ellis, C. J.; Asplund, J.; Benesperi, R.; Branquinho, C.; DiNuzzo, L.; Hurtado, P.; Martínez, I.; Matos, P.; Nascimbene, J.; Pinho, P.; Prieto, M.; et al. (2021). Functional traits in lichen ecology: A review of challenge and opportunity. Microorganisms 9: 766.
Hurtado, P.; Prieto, M.; de Bello, F.; Aragón, G.; López-Angulo, J.; Giordani, P.; Díaz-Peña, E. M.; Vicente, R.; Merinero, S.; Košuthová, A.; Benesperi, R.; Bianchi, E.; Mayrhofer, H.; Nascimbene, J.; Grube, M.; Wedin, M.; Westberg, M.; Martínez, I. (2020). Contrasting environmental drivers determine biodiversity patterns in epiphytic lichen communities along a European gradient. Microorganisms 8: 1913.
Hurtado, P.; Matos, P.; Aragón, G.; Branquinho, C.; Prieto, M.; Martínez, I. (2020). How much matching there is in functional, phylogenetic and taxonomic optima of peiphytic macrolichen communities along an European climatic gradient? Science of the Total Environment 712: 136533.
Hurtado, P.; Prieto, M.; Aragón, G.; Escudero, A.; Martínez, I. (2019). Critical predictors of functional phylogenetic and taxonomic diversity are geographically structured in lichen epiphytic communities. Journal of Ecology 107: 2303-2316.
Aragón, G.; Martínez, I.; Hurtado, P.; Benítez, A.; Rodríguez, C.; Prieto, M. (2019). Using growth forms to predict epiphytic lichen abundance in a wide variety of forest types. Diversity 11: 51.