In the first podcast video of 2017, Julia Chacón-Labella presents the findings of her recent study, accepted for publication in Journal of Ecology, and titled ‘Evidence for a stochastic geometry of biodiversity: the effects of species abundance, richness and intraspecific clustering‘. This study was part of Julia’s PhD project on elucidating spatial patterns of diversity in a species-rich shrubland, that she carried out at Rey Juan Carlos University with Adrián Escudero and Marcelino de la Cruz. The video is available below and can also be found on the Journal of Ecology YouTube channel (English subtitles available).

Julia Chacón-Labella is a community ecologist and her research is mainly focused on understanding the processes that maintain diversity and promote coexistence in species-rich communities with a main focus in arid and semi-arid shrublands. Julia follows spatially explicit approaches, mainly based on point pattern analyses (i.e. using fully mapped plant communities, where all plant individuals in a plot are located with their X and Y coordinates). Julia is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Rey Juan Carlos University and continues addressing questions related to species coexistence and biodiversity patterns but extending this spatial framework to include the role of fungal symbionts and roots diversity spatial patterns.