I am interested in behavioural ecology research linked to conservation, especially considering carnivores as target species. For my DPhil, my work focuses on the intraguild competition of large African carnivores, more specifically I will look at how African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) cope with the competition with larger carnivores (lions and spotted hyaenas) in a system with limited surface water availability in Zimbabwe. This work aims to ultimately propose water management recommendations to reduce competition and increase African wild dogs´ fitness.
I was born and raised in Mexico in a bicultural family: Spanish and Mexican. I studied biology at the University of Guadalajara (Mexico), and my thesis was about avian diversity. For the last 5 years I have been fortunate to participate in different research projects: tapirs in the Maya Rainforest (Mexico), meerkats in the Kalahari (South Africa), wolves in Yellowstone National Park (U.S.), and felines in the west part of Mexico. Since 2016, I am an active member of Bio-mas.org, where we organize in-situ conservation courses. In 2018, I completed a Postgraduate Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice (WildCRU, Oxford) with a Distinction. My project was about Time allocation in Ethiopian wolves.
In 2019, with two Mexican scholarships (CONACYT and Universidad de Guadalajara), I enrolled in the DPhil under the supervision of Dr. Andy Loveridge, Dr. Marion Valeix, Dr. Esther van der Meer, and Dr. Egil Dröge. My research interests are in behavioural ecology and carnivore conservation. My work for my DPhil focuses on the intraguild competition of large African carnivores, more specifically I will look at how African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) cope with the competition with larger carnivores (lions and spotted hyaenas) in a system with limited surface water availability in Zimbabwe. This work aims to ultimately propose water management recommendations to reduce competition and increase African wild dogs´ fitness. My DPhil work is in collaboration with Painted Dog Conservation, Hwange Lion Project (WildCRU), and CNRS-HERD project.
