Research
I am currently working on unveiling ecological mechanisms that facilitate the long-term stability of metapopulations. In particular, I want to know how organisms respond and adapt to changes in the environment and how these responses subsequently affect ecological network dynamics.
Research projects
I am currently a member of the consortium regarding the HFSP Project on organism response to perturbations.
Within the context of the project, I will be focusing on modeling the population dynamics of microbiomes under perturbations.
I will implement efficient simulations (mostly in Julia) to explore the space of parameters that influences the community dynamics.
These explorations will then serve to define hypotheses to be tested empirically in the lab.
Furthermore, I will apply my vast experience with scientific computing to write a cohesive set of scripts that faciliate large computer simulations on high performance computer clusters.
This will make it easier for all members of this project to execute simulations and complex analyses, greatly enhancing the turnover rate of (simulation) experiments.
Latest work
J. Nauta et al. (2022).
"Foraging behavior and patch size distribution jointly determine population dynamics in fragmented landscapes".
J.R.Soc. Interface 19.
⤷ We study landscape fragmentation and its affect on foraging strategy. Using a lattice Monte Carlo approach we show that foragers that perform scale-free random walks can reduce, but not prevent or minimze, the amount of habitat that is irreversibly lost.