Profesores e Investigadores

Departamentos

Curriculum Vitae

Lars Markesteijn
Investigador/Técnico

Centro

E.S. CC. Experimentales y Tecnología

Departamento

Biología y Geología, Física y Química Inorgánica

Área

Ecología

Contacto

lars.markesteijn@urjc.es
Información general
Presentación

  • Lars Markesteijn is a Distinguished Research Lecturer (Beatriz Galindo Fellow) in the Area of Biodiversity and Conservation, Rey Juan Carlos University, a Senior Lecturer of Forest Sciences at the School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University (United Kingdom) and an affiliated researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama.

    Lars holds a Ph.D. in Tropical Forest Ecology and an M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Tropical Land Use from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher on different projects with STRI and the Universities of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), Oxford (UK), Yale (USA), Oregon State (USA) and Bayreuth (Germany).

    His research interests are broad, but mainly cover tropical forest ecology, functional ecology, restoration ecology, and interactions between plants and their natural enemies. Lars is fascinated by biological diversity and consequently, most of his work is carried out in biologically complex tropical ecosystems, where he addresses the processes underlying the function and coexistence of tropical plants and  mechanisms of the generation and maintenance of biodiversity.

Méritos
  • Biography
    I obtained my Ph.D. in 2010 at Wageningen University (the Netherlands). In my dissertation, I addressed the functional ecology of tropical tree species, aiming to understand how species¿ drought and shade tolerance strategies explain species coexistence and distribution along resource gradients. In early 2010, I was awarded a 2-year Rubicon grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), that I used to collaborate with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) to study the role of plant hydraulics in explaining differences in drought performance between liana and tree species. Late in 2011, I moved to Spain where I visited the Ecology and Global Change group at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Spanish National Research Council (MNCN-CSIC) in Madrid for a year. Early in 2013, I started working on the NERC-funded project, entitled `Natural enemies, climate and the maintenance of tropical tree diversity¿, at Community Ecology Research Oxford (CERO), University of Oxford, in collaboration with STRI. In this project we set out to test the hypothesis that humidity drives variation in tropical plant diversity through its influence on the interactions between plants and their natural enemies. The 2015-2016 El Niño event, and subsequent funding through a RAPID grant by the United States National Science Foundation (US NSF), provided a unique opportunity for a third postdoc to study the immediate effects of an extreme drought event on the physiological performance and regeneration dynamics of tropical plants along a rainfall gradient. This project resulted from a collaboration between Oregon State, Yale School of Forestry, Bayreuth University and STRI. In 2016, I joined the School of Natural Sciences at  Bangor University in 2016 as a Lecturer in Forest Sciences, and a SÊR Cymru MSCA CoFund Research Fellow, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2019. Finally, in 2020 I joined the Area of Biodiversity and Conservation at the Department of Biology and Geography, Physics and Inorganic Chemistry, URJC, as a Distinguished Research Lecturer (Beatriz Galindo Fellow).

    Qualifications
    2010 - Ph.D. Tropical forest ecology Wageningen University
    2005 - M.Sc. Tropical land use Wageningen University
    2002 - B.Sc. Tropical land use Wageningen University

    Affiliations
    Bangor University, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Docencia y asignaturas impartidas en el curso actual

  • Grado

    PLAN ASIGNATURA
    (2026) GRADO EN BIOLOGIA (MOSTOLES) IIMPACTO DE LA ACTIVIDAD HUMANA EN LA BIOSFERA: PROCESOS DE CAMBIO GLOBAL
    (2317) GRADO EN BIOLOGIA (MOSTOLES) IIIMPACTO DE LA ACTIVIDAD HUMANA EN LA BIOSFERA: PROCESOS DE CAMBIO GLOBAL
    (2106) GRADO EN CIENCIAS AMBIENTALES (MOSTOLES)RESTAURACION DEL MEDIO NATURAL
Listado de proyectos (Últimos 10 años)
Códigos de investigador
Publicaciones

  • A selection of relevant publications from the past 10 years:

    Van der Sande, M. T., Poorter, L., Schnitzer, S. A., Engelbrecht, B. M. J., & Markesteijn, L. (2019). The hydraulic efficiency¿safety trade-off differs between lianas and trees. Ecology, 100(5), e02666.
     
    Weissflog, A., Markesteijn, L., Lewis, O. T., Comita, L. S., & Engelbrecht, B. M. J. (2018). Contrasting patterns of insect herbivory and predation pressure across a tropical rainfall gradient. Biotropica, 50(2), 302-311.

    Cusack, D. F., Markesteijn, L., Condit, R., Lewis, O. T., & Turner, B. L. (2018). Soil carbon stocks in tropical forests regulated by base cation effects on fine roots. Biogeochemistry, 137(1-2), 253-266.

    Sterck, F., Markesteijn, L., Toledo, M., & Poorter, L. (2014). Sapling performance along resource gradients drives tree species distributions within and across tropical forests. Ecology, 95(9), 2514-2525.

    Van der Sande, M. T., Poorter, L., Schnitzer, S. A., & Markesteijn, L. (2013). Are lianas more drought-tolerant than trees? A test for the role of hydraulic architecture and other stem and leaf traits. Oecologia, 172(4), 961-972.

    Sterck, F., Markesteijn, L., Schieving, F., & Poorter, L. (2011). Functional traits determine trade-offs and niches in a tropical forest community. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 108(51), 20627-20632.

    Onoda, Y., Westoby, M., Adler, P. B., Choong, A. M. F., Clissold, F. J., Cornelissen, J. H. C., Diaz, S., Dominy, N. J., Elgart, A., Enrico, L., Fine, P. V. A., Howard, J. J., Jalili, A., Kitajima, K., Kurokawa, H., McArthur, C., Lucas, P. W., Markesteijn, L., Perez-Harguindeguy, N., ... Yamashita, N. (2011). Global patterns of leaf mechanical properties. Ecology Letters, 14(3), 301-312.

    Markesteijn, L., Poorter, L., Paz, H., Sack, L., & Bongers, F. (2011). Ecological differentiation in xylem cavitation resistance is associated with stem and leaf structural traits. Plant Cell and Environment, 34(1), 137-148.

    Markesteijn, L., Poorter, L., Bongers, F., Paz, H., & Sack, L. (2011). Hydraulics and life history of tropical dry forest tree species: coordination of species' drought and shade tolerance. New Phytologist, 191(2), 480-495.

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