The research team of the Caveheat project is formed by people from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) and University of Murcia (UM), but the project also counts with the collaboration of prestigious researchers from the University of Plymouth (United Kingdom), University of Seville and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE, CSIC-UPF, Barcelona), as well as a network of entomologists and expert speleologists (“Asociaciò Catalana de Biospeleologia”, “grupo espeleo SIE del C.E. de Barcelona” and “Grup d'Estudis Subterranis Garraf - GES Garraf").
David Sánchez Fernández, the principal investigator of the project, is a postdoctoral researcher at the UCLM with a wide theoretical background and skills in a variety of ecological topics, including evolution, biogeography, community ecology, conservation biology and macroecology (especially insects). His main research lines focus on exploring how current and future environmental changes affect biodiversity, and how can biodiversity be conserved given current and future challenges.
Andrés Millán,, permanent lecturer of Ecology and principal investigator of the Aquatic Ecology research group of the University of Murcia, has a wide experience in insect taxonomy (especially coleoptera and hemiptera from Mediterranean inland waters) and their biology, physiology, biogeography, evolution and conservation.
Susana Pallarés is a postdoctoral researcher interested in insect ecophysiology. Her PhD research (at the University of Murcia) was focussed on the physiology, ecology and evolution of aquatic beetles in inland saline waters. Currently she is the technician who organizes and executes the thermotolerance experiments of the CAVEheAT project at the laboratories of the UCLM and UM.
Raquel Colado is a PhD student (FPI contact) in the UCLM. She has just started to work in her PhD thesis, framed within the aims of the CAVEheAT project. She has experience in taxonomy and ecology of terrestrial arthropods, especially subterranean ones.
Valeria Rizzo is a speleologist and PhD expert in the evolution and ecology of cave beetles, which was the subject of her thesis at the IBE. She organizes and participates in the sampling campaings of the project in the Pyrinees and Cantabrian mountains.
Jordi Comas is a leading speleologist and one of the foremost taxonomists on Iberian subterranean insects. He collects beetles in coastal caves of Catalonia.
Aitor Montes is a biologist, naturalist and amateur speologist interested in the ecology and evolution of hypogean fauna. He is currently working as a speleo-turistic guide in Arrikruzt caves and is sampling in several caves of the Basque Country for the CAVEheAT project.
David Bilton is a proffesor at Plymouth University working on a variety of invertebrate groups, particularly beetles. His research deals with a number of related areas in ecology and evolution, including the determinants of geographical range size and the role of ecophysiology and dispersal ability in setting range limits. He is also interested in how these factors may affect a species relative vulnerability to global change.
Pedro Abellán (postdoctoral researcher at the University of Seville), has a strong background in the conservation, biogeography and evolutionary biology of insects, especially beetles. His research lines aim to understand the evolutionary processes that gave rise to current biodiversity patterns, how biodiversity respond to global changes, both ancient and recent, and setting conservation priorities for species and areas.
Ignacio Ribera (Water and Cave Evolution Lab, IBE) uses water and cave beetles to address different ecological and evolutionary questions centred on the origin and distribution of biodiversity. His current focus is the study of the causes and consequences of range expansions, and the evolution of adaptations to new habitats such as the subterranean environment.
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The Speologist Group of Villacarrillo (GEV) (Jaén, Spain), organizes subterranean research activities (exploration, topography, archeology, subterranean biology, geography...) and sport activities. Their collaboration will allow us to expand the taxonomic and geographic spectrum of the project by including invertebrate species from subterranean areas of southeastern Spain.
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