This week, thanks to Taith programme, I am visiting Rice University in Houston, Texas. I am working with Dr César Uribe, of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and with Dr Lydia Beaudrot from BioSciences on developing potential future collaborations collaborations to better understand the changes in food web structure across spatial scales.

César is currently developing innovative ways to quantify distances between network shapes beyond changes in structural properties. These structures can in turn be related to covariates such as environmental factors to try and predict structure from contextual information on ecosystems.

I presented my work at the lab’s meeting and César has also kindly organised for me to deliver a seminar on recent work I have developed with my friend and collaborator Alberto Pascual-García, the head of the Integrative Biology Lab @ CNB on Unveiling the link between ecological and evolutionary stability in mutualistic networks.

I have also had the chance to catch up with Annie Finneran, a PhD student at Rice working with Lydia and César on the effects of ecosystem’s productivity on food web structure. We have had a couple of interesting discussions about the ways in which network structure can be quantified and how to use environmental metrics of productivity such as NDVI to assess the effects of habitat productivity on food webs. She does amazing camera trapping studies in Tanzania and other amazing locations!

Aside from the great research we have been discussing here and prospects for future collaborations, I have also had the chance to meet bird expert Professor Cin-Ty Lee, a passionate bird watcher who has kindly shown me around the Houston area, coast and the swamps in the search of new species, including some owls on campus!

Thanks César for being an excellent host and allow me to share my research at Rice, to Lydia and Annie for the interesting discussions, to Cin-Ty for sharing with me the wildlife around Houston, and to the lab members (Alex, Jhojan and Carlos) for the hospitality!