Collaborators

To achieve transdisciplinary solutions for specific issues, multidisciplinary teams must collaborate effectively and communicate coherently. While effective collaboration and clear communication are key requirements, mutual respect and shared motivation toward achieving objectives are equally crucial. Personally, I value balanced teamwork that fosters a nurturing environment of safety and growth. Including students and communities in decision-making and adjusting plans while implementing projects are essential. During my professional training and academic career as a researcher and teacher, I have had the opportunity to work with a diverse array of individuals and groups, many of them have significantly contributed to my personal and professional development. In the following pages, I present the colleagues and networks with whom I am actively collaborating.

Luzmila hanging out in Houston, Texas, U.S.A.

Luzmila Sánchez

Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

I first met Luzmila while working as a technician at the Fundación La Salle Hydrobiological Research Station in San Félix, Bolivar State, Venezuela. Since then, we have collaborated constantly on a number of initiatives that investigate the ecology of plankton and benthic communities in the major rivers of the Orinoco and Amazon basins. Additionally, we have worked together to look at how changes in land use impact periphyton diversity and functioning in streams in the Cordillera de la Costa in Venezuela and the Andes in Ecuador. Due to her affiliation with Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, our long-standing and fruitful working connection is still going strong.

Nathan with a gorgeous specimen of Acanthicus hystrix in Aguarico River, Ecuador. Photo David Brooks

Nathan K. Lujan

Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada

Nathan and I were at Texas A&M, but at different times. He joined Kirk Winemiller’s lab as a postdoc just a year after I finished my PhD there. We finally met years later for a project in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I invited him on two challenging, month-long expeditions in the Western Amazon, and we have collaborated successfully since then. We definitely share a passion for neotropical biodiversity and sampling in remote, pristine rivers. He then invited me to explore the Peruvian Ucayali River tributaries, where I joined his team, supporting limnological and plankton sampling.

Alejandra and I on a bright summer day in Piriápolis, Uruguay

Alejandra Leal

Universidad de la República, Rocha, Uruguay

I have been working with Alejandra since my undergraduate studies. Through joining a major project led by Alejandra in the Orinoco River Basin on the palaeoecological reconstruction of vegetation and human occupancy, she introduced me to the world of paleoecology, so I became familiar with the taxonomy of testate amoebae - a group of protozoans that are considered important non-pollen palynomorph markers of water table levels. Currently, we are collaborating on plankton of large rivers of the Amazon, and on another paleoecology project, this time in Laguna Negra, Uruguay!

Margenny sampling macroinvertebrates in one of the few forested arroyos in southern Uruguay

Margenny Barrios

Universidad de la República, Maldonado, Uruguay

I feel very proud of her as one of my graduate students at IVIC, not only for her achievements but also for her great personal qualities. Her research thesis on the food preferences of Phylloicus cressae larvae, which is a caddisfly, required a lot of persistence and patience. From her thesis, she has already published two papers and has one more currently awaiting submission. I feel fortunate to still be collaborating with her, not only as a member of her doctoral committee, but also as part of a recently approved project led by her. This project, which focuses on trophic ecology in Maldonado Creek located in Uruguay, has allowed us to keep up our working relationship going.

Noemí Chacón at her laboratory in the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research. Photo IVIC Communications Dept.

Noemí Chacón

Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research, Caracas, Venezuela

Originally a chemist, Noemí is one of those people who is always present and available to answer any of the questions that we ecologists ask ourselves from time to time about cross-cutting issues between chemistry and ecology. Our collaboration dates back more than a decade, but is currently focused on the review of small-scale agricultural systems in South America, climate change, and N biogeochemistry in tropical agricultural watersheds. Our future projects will surely focus on the biogeochemistry and biodiversity of soils and sediments, intertwined with small farmer and indigenous agricultural systems.

Beatriz taking pictures at La Boca, Ocumare River, Venezuela. Photo Carlos Carmona

Beatriz López-Sánchez

Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research, Caracas, Venezuela

Beatriz and I established the Aquatic Ecology Lab at the Center of Ecology in the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research when we coincided there. Although we were the only ones working on aquatic systems in our center, we were able to gather a really good and competent group of technicians and students to have a great and very active laboratory. Fortunately, after both of us being away from Venezuela for a few years, we have returned to IVIC to reactivate the Aquatic Ecology Laboratory. We keep up with our collaboration on the taxonomy and ecology of freshwater decapods of Venezuela.

María Teresa on a sandy bar at San Miguel Stream, one of her favourite places on Earth!

María Teresa Moreno

MTC Consulting, Santiago de Chile, Chile

A passion for science is what defines Teresa. This shared passion for doing science, field excursions, and implementing laboratory assays is what drives our collaboration. As one of my former graduate students, and later a lab technician, it has been a real pleasure to work with her on crustacean biology and water quality monitoring. We are still working on several manuscripts from her thesis and laboratory projects. Now, taking advantage of her new skills in data management and statistical analysis, we are making faster progress in writing the manuscripts we have pending.

Jim and piranha, Cinaruco River Camp, Venezuela

Jim Cotner

University of Minnessota, St. Paul, U.S.A.

I met Jim in Venezuela during the first field trip to the Cinaruco River as part of the large project on the effects of fish on the benthic ecology of the littoral areas of lakes and the main channel of the floodplain system. As co-PI of that project, Jim became my mentor in the field of aquatic metabolism, using and deploying benthic chambers, productivity bottles and sondes with data loggers to measure primary productivity and ecosystem respiration. Today, we have several manuscripts pending from data on fluvial metabolism and nitrification in high-elevation streams in the Andes that I collected during my time in Ecuador.

MM on her way to collect some data in the Grijalva Floodplain, Mexico

María Mercedes Castillo

El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Villahermosa, México

María Mercedes was my undergraduate advisor for a very ambitious thesis on bacterioplankton in the Caura River. For this work, I sampled more than 15 sites in the lower Caura continuously for 24 months. From then on we worked together intermittently until recently, when we started working together in the LimnoVen network. She was the best advisor, remains a good friend, and has always been an excellent scientist with a rare wisdom about where to go and how far to go. Nowadays, we are rescuing all the old datasets from the rivers we studied in the past to re-analyze them with more powerful statistical approaches, framed within the new emerging knowledge of the last 20 years on stream ecology.

JV Montoya, Christoph Schubart, Carlos Carmona-Suárez, and Klaus posing in the Henri Pittier National Park, Venezuela. Photo Beatriz López-Sánchez

Carlos Carmona-Suárez

Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research, Caracas, Venezuela

Carlos and I first met at the IVIC Ecology Center when I arrived as a postdoctoral researcher in 2009. As researchers, we share a common interest in the biology and ecology of decapods. This led us, in collaboration with Beatriz López and María Teresa Moreno, to conduct a two-year study of the populations of two sympatric species of semi-terrestrial crabs in a coastal river in northern Venezuela. This resulted in two master's theses, several presentations at congresses, and various manuscripts. Carlos possesses a wealth of knowledge regarding crab biology, and engaging in discussions about them with him is a real pleasure. We are currently working on several manuscripts on crabs, which we intend to publish in due course.

Michael with his students in a field trip to the Teusaca River watershed near Bogotá

Michael Ahrens

Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Bogotá, Colombia

Michael and I met in Bogota in early 2024, when I joined his laboratory as a visiting professor at the University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano's limnology and aquatic ecology research group. During my time in his lab, I worked on plankton samples from the Peruvian Amazon that I had collected on a trip with Nathan Lujan a few months earlier. I was also able to join Michael in a few of field trips to the paramos near Bogotá with his students. Working with Michael briefly in his lab allowed us to kick off the collaboration we maintain in the project with Amazon plankton while laying the foundation for an academic relationship that I am confident will continue in the future.

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