Order statistics and the scaling of species abundance distributions – Luís Borda de Água
- Investigador Doutorado em Biologia
- Centro de Ecologia Aplicada “Prof. Baeta Neves”
- Instituto Superior de Agronomia
1 de Abril de 2025, Terça-feira, 12h30m às 13h30m
Sala de Educação Ambiental do
Centro de Ecologia Aplicada “Prof Baeta Neves”
Abstract
This presentation explores a mathematical approach to understanding species diversity in ecological communities by examining entire communities (like trees in a tropical forest) to identify quantitative patterns that consistently appear across different ecosystems. We use order statistics as a framework to unify concepts like Species-Area Relationships and Species Abundance Distributions and we aim to demonstrate how mathematical frameworks can help describe and explain repeatable patterns in biodiversity across different scales and communities.
Luís A. da S. Borda de Água earned a degree in electrical engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Portugal, followed by an MSc in plasma physics while serving as a teaching assistant. He then completed a two-year fellowship at Kyoto University, Japan, working on space plasma simulations. He then pursued an MSc in ecological management and a PhD in biology at Imperial College London. Afterward, he worked in the United States and Canada for eight years before returning to Portugal. His research in numerical ecology applies mathematical and computational skills from engineering and physics. He focuses on biodiversity patterns—using fractals, multifractals, image analysis, and extreme value theory—and on animal population viability through simulation software and Bayesian methods.
