Pilar Hurtado

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at Rey Juan Carlos University

Characterizing functional trait variation and covariation, and its drivers, is critical to understand the response of species to changing environmental conditions. Evolutionary and environmental factors determine how traits vary among and within species at multiple scales. However, disentangling their relative contribution is challenging and a comp...

Global change is threatening the integrity of forest ecosystems worldwide, amplifying the need for resilience‐based management to ensure their conservation and sustain the services they provide. Yet, current efforts are still limited by the lack of implementation of clear frameworks for operationalizing resilience in decision‐making processes. To o...

The use of a functional trait approach has generally shown success in understanding how lichens are distributed, explaining their occurrence and abundance. Indeed, this success highlights the importance of understanding trait variability within and among lichen species, and at a community scale, especially where traits are related to hydration dyna...

Contrary to the assumption that epiphytic lichens, which obtain water and nutrients from the atmosphere, do not exhibit host species preference, this notion is challenged by the limited number of studies that cover a wide geographical range and diverse phorophyte species (hereafter referred to as “host species”). To investigate this assumption, we...

Global change is causing the melting of ice masses, permafrost thawing, and the shrinking of glaciers, thereby reshaping nature's rhythms. Longer thaw phases and more frequent dry periods are transforming water‐driven transitional ecosystems (e.g., glacier‐fed streams) in the Polar‐Alpine biome. This shift risks replacing unique, specialist species...

Biological soil covers (BSCs) play a pivotal role in ecosystem functioning by enhancing soil stability, mediating nutrient cycling, and influencing soil hydrology. Recognized as ecosystem engineers, they can physically modify, maintain, or create habitats, facilitating plant community development. Through these intricate interactions, BSCs contribu...

A significant fraction of Earth's ecosystems undergoes periodic wet‐dry alternating transitional states. These globally distributed water‐driven transitional ecosystems, such as intermittent rivers and coastal shorelines, have traditionally been studied as two distinct entities, whereas they constitute a single, interconnected meta‐ecosystem. This...

Generalism in resource use is commonly considered a critical driver of population success, species distribution and extinction risk. This idea can be questioned as generalism may be a result rather than the cause of species abundance and range size. We tested these contrasting causal hypotheses focusing on host use in three databases encompassing a...

Resilience is commonly addressed when dealing with the sustainable planning and management of social–ecological systems, but we lack a unified framework for its quantitative assessment and application. We present an operational resilience framework (ORF) based on recognizing and relating several elements: system variables (e.g., ecosystem services)...

Microbial biodiversity is fundamental to maintain ecosystem functioning in seasonally variable ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how alterations in water availability caused by episodic drying compromise the ability of stream microbes to maintain multiple functions simultaneously (e.g., primary production and carbon cycling). Using data from...

Los ríos intermitentes y las corrientes efímeras son ecosistemas acuáticos singulares que experimentan de manera natural y periódica periodos sin flujo de agua superficial, tanto temporal como espacialmente (Datry et al. 2016). Estos cursos de agua, por tanto, alternan una fase húmeda o acuática, donde el agua fluye superficialmente, y una fase sec...

Ríos intermitentes y arroyos efímeros constituyen corrientes de agua que dejan de fluir y/o se secan completamente en algún punto del tiempo y espacio, de forma que los organismos han de adaptarse a la temporalidad de estos hábitats con ciclos de inmersión y secado variables en el tiempo e intensidad. Uno de los organismos adaptados a vivir en esto...

New chorological data on freshwater lichens in central Spain are presented. We have identified twenty-one saxicolous species resistant to periodic immersion at five localities of Montes de Toledo. Eighteen species are reported for the first time in Castilla-La Mancha territory. Remarkable extensions in the distribution range are found for most lich...

Beech forests are considered one of the most emblematic ecosystems in the temperate deciduous broadleaf forest biome and host a wide variety of specialised cryptogamic organisms such as epiphytic lichens. This checklist is the first compilation focused on the epiphytic lichen diversity occurring on Fagus sylvatica L. trees along Europe. The checkli...

Aquatic fungi are highly diverse organisms that play a critical role in global biogeochemical cycles. Yet it remains unclear which assembly processes determine their co-occurrence and assembly patterns over gradients of drying intensity, which is a common stressor in fluvial networks. Although aquatic fungi possess drying-specific adaptations, litt...

Biocrusts are major contributors to dryland diversity, functioning, and services. However, little is known about how habitat degradation will impact multiple facets of biocrust diversity and measurable functional traits. We evaluated changes in taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of biocrust‐forming lichens along a habitat degradation...

Water use traits in lichens are important attributes that determine the duration of hydration and metabolically active periods. In this study, the water holding capacity (WHC) and specific thallus mass (STM) were measured for seven macrolichen species (Parmelia sulcata, Parmelina tiliacea, Evernia prunastri, Ramalina farinacea, Lobaria pulmonaria,...

Altitudinal gradients have been widely studied, especially on mountains, in order to investigate diversity patterns occurring among and within communities, on the basis of abiotic and biotic factors. Taking into account taxonomic diversity and functional diversity simultaneously is fundamental to shed light on the drivers that shape communities [3]...

Community ecology has experienced a major transition, from a focus on patterns in taxonomic composition, to revealing the processes underlying community assembly through the analysis of species functional traits. The power of the functional trait approach is its generality, predictive capacity such as with respect to environmental change, and, thro...

Assessing the ecological impacts of environmental change on biological communities requires knowledge of the factors driving the spatial patterns of the three diversity facets along extensive environmental gradients. We quantified the taxonomic (TD), functional (FD), and phylogenetic diversity (PD) of lichen epiphytic communities in 23 beech forest...

Traditional approaches in trait‐based community ecology typically expect that trait filtering across broad environmental gradients is largely due to replacement of species, rather than intraspecific trait adjustments. Recently, the role of intraspecific trait variability has been largely highlighted as an important contributor mediating the ability...

Adopting an integrative approach that explicitly includes the different facets of biodiversity is crucial to assess the response of biological communities to changing environments. The identification of the optimal climatic conditions where communities maximize their functional, phylogenetic and taxonomic diversity is useful to compare whether the...

Assessing the response of biological communities to contrasting environmental conditions is crucial to predict the effects of global change drivers. The influence of multiple environmental factors may differ depending on the diversity facet considered, which emphasizes the need to simultaneously evaluate the functional (FD), phylogenetic (PD) and t...

Epiphytic richness is continuously declining due to forest fragmentation, logging, burning, agriculture, and livestock. The rate of species loss caused by habitat degradation and loss is more pronounced in Central and South America. Considering the extreme difficulty and time required to identify the more inconspicuous species, rapid diversity asse...