FARIÑA Rivas, José Miguel

Educational Background

Assistant Professor
Bs. Sc. Biology (Honors). Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 1992
Ph.D. Biological Sciences (Ecology). Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2000
Postdoctoral Training. Brown University (USA), 2003
Phone office: +56-2-6862732 Fax: +56-2-6862621
Office Address: Biomed Building, Ecology Department Office 411, 4th floor
e-mails: Jose_Miguel_Farina@brown.edu, jmfarina@bio.puc.cl

Research Interests

My main research interests encompass questions related to both community and ecosystem ecology. In recent years significant efforts have been made to integrate these two fields. As part of this effort, my research focuses on two areas: 1) the exchange of materials and organisms between marine and terrestrial ecosystems and 2) the relative importance of production (a “bottom-up” process) and consumption (“top-down” process) in structuring biological communities.

My collaborators and I are investigating exchanges between land and sea using a model, which predicts that movement of materials and consumers between ecosystems will be most important where the difference in productivity between adjacent systems is greatest. More specifically, the model predicts that materials (nutrients and biomass) move from more productive to less productive ecosystems, and that organisms (consumers) move in the opposite direction. In order to investigate these predictions, we are studying the magnitude and extent of nutrient transfer (nitrogen and phosphorous) by marine vertebrates (seals and birds) to terrestrial environments in the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador) and the Gulf of Maine (USA). We are also investigating activity budgets and foraging behavior of terrestrial vertebrates (birds and reptiles) in rocky intertidal shores of the Atacama Desert (Chile), in order to understand movement of consumers between marine and terrestrial systems.

To assess the relative importance of production and consumption in the organization of biological communities, we are investigating rocky intertidal shores on the northern Chilean coast that have been affected by copper mine contamination. We found that ephemeral algae monopolized the substrate at contaminated sites, resulting in decreased diversity. Dominance by ephemeral algae was linked to increased levels of primary productivity, which permeated throughout the entire food web. Overall, bottom-up processes (primary production) were more important in the contaminated sites, whereas top-down processes (consumption) were more important in uncontaminated sites.
The broad biogeographical perspective we are using to investigate the first topic (exchanges across ecosystems) will enable us to assess the generality of the proposed model, and to produce significant contributions to this emergent field. The approach used to investigate the second topic allows us to explore and contribute to several important topics of community and ecosystem ecology such as: 1) the relation between structural and functional aspects of ecological communities, 2) the idiosyncratic effect of some species on ecosystem processes, and 3) the effects of anthropogenic perturbations on functional changes in natural ecosystems.

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