Next Thursday, 26 May 2022, at 6:30 p.m., in the Auditorium of the Social Building of the Botanical Garden of Castilla-La Mancha, researcher Fernando Valladares, from the National Museum of Natural Sciences – CSIC, will give a lecture entitled ‘Biodiversity, pandemics and ecological function: much at stake’.

Fernando Valladares holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid, with special awards for his bachelor's and doctoral degrees, and the Mason H. Hale International Award (Canada, 1994). He is currently a research professor at the CSIC, where he heads the Ecology and Global Change group at the National Museum of Natural Sciences. He is also an associate professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid. He is also director of the LINCGlobal international laboratory on global change and the Master's Degree in Global Change at the Menéndez Pelayo International University and the CSIC, as well as teaching on the master's degrees in biodiversity at the Pablo Olavide University in Seville and the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

He has published more than 300 scientific papers, including articles and books, most of them in international journals on ecology and plant biology listed in the ISI with an H index of 41. Since 2015, he has been a highly cited scientist in the field of Ecology and Environment (Highly Cited Researcher, corresponding to the group of the top 1% of scientists with the greatest impact, according to Thomson Reuters). He has given more than 150 lectures and courses at more than 25 universities and research centres around the world, including Canada, Estonia, the United States, Chile, Brazil, Australia and numerous European countries. He was president of the Spanish Association of Terrestrial Ecology for eight years. The main theme of his work has revolved around the mechanisms involved in plant survival in extreme conditions, especially plastic responses to the interaction between environmental factors influenced by human activities. He has contributed significantly to the estimation of phenotypic plasticity and to the understanding of its importance in the responses of organisms to global change.This research is complemented by fieldwork at the community and ecosystem level to estimate the effects of global change on terrestrial ecosystems, as well as for the ecological restoration of the most degraded ones. His interest in disseminating science in general and the ecology of global change in particular has led him to contribute to numerous radio and television programmes, as well as to various sections of the newspapers  eldiario.es and Público.

Admission to Fernando Valladares' lecture is free of charge, subject to availability.