CVAndré Luís Luza is an Agriculture Technician (2006), Biologist (2010), and PhD in Ecology (2018).
His main interest within Ecology is on the statistical modeling of species distribution over space and time – using the perspectives of single- and multi-species – and on the emerging properties of local sets of co-occurring species. He is also interested on hierarchical modeling applied to ecology, and on best practices of organization, curatorship, and release of ecological data sets.
He has been conducting research in the fields of population ecology, community ecology (including its functional and phylogenetic branches), and on the interface between macroevolution and macroecology. His research has been contributing to the formulation of strategies to conserve species in natural grasslands subjected to cattle grazing, and to understand the potential of human-modified habitats, such as tree plantations and crop fields, to host communities resembling those from natural forests and grasslands. His research on population ecology has applications to epidemiology, and aids to improve the quality of epidemiological surveillance and to better understand the relationship between the distribution of diseases and their vectors.
Although most his research involved small-sized rodents and marsupials, he also conducts research with medium- and large-sized mammals, and with birds, amphibians, freshwater fishes, invertebrates (mainly Aedes mosquitoes) and, most recently, fishes and benthos from coral reefs. Thus, he has no special interest for a specific taxonomic group and ecosystem – he likes them all; however, he has a special interest for exploring extensive and freely available data sets!
Since begging 2020, he holds a postdoctoral position at Federal University of Santa Maria, under the supervision of Dra. Mariana Bender. He integrates the project “SinBiose Brazilian Reefs in the Anthropocene”, led by Mariana Bender and Sergio Floeter. André has the function of organizing and delivering good quality data for the project, and conducting research aiming to synthesize and predict the effect of biogeographical and ecological processes (including those influenced by humans) on fishes and benthos from Brazilian reef ecosystems.
He likes cycling, jogging, and long boarding; he never dived or came close to a reef. He hopes to do this soon!