Hi!
I am Carla Vázquez-Gonzalez (Ph.D. in Biology. University of Vigo, Spain. 2020), currently a PostDoc in Dr. Kailen Mooney's Lab at University of California - Irvine and Dr. Xoaquín Moreira's Lab at Misión Biológica de Galicia - National Spanish Research Council.
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I am a plant ecologist interested on interactions between plants, herbivores and herbivore natural enemies. In particular, I aim to identify what plant traits mediate such interactions, including physical and chemical traits that act both as direct and indirect defences. One of the central axes of my research is to understand how biotic and abiotic environmental factors determine variation in plant defences, and how such variation ultimately determine tri-trophic interactions. By doing so I aim to build a bridge between the study of the ecological processes that operate at the individual level (i.e., natural selection and phenotypic plasticity) with its potential outcomes at the community level.
🐛 My current research is focussed on three main research lines 🐛
EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES DRIVING GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN PLANT DEFENCESPlant defences are costly, and thus plants must invest in defences according to their costs and benefits, which are ultimately determined by herbivory pressure and resource availability. Thus, geographic variation in biotic and abiotic conditions are thought to strongly determine concomitant patterns of inter and intraspecific variation in plant defences. Studies addressing the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that operate to produce geographic variation have usually been performed under a bi-trophic perspective. Explicitly addressing the effects of the third trophic level (i.e., herbivore natural enemies) driving geographic variation in defences and herbivory can bring relevant insights into the evolutionary ecology of plant-herbivore interactions. |
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