Fernando Ojeda

I got a PhD in Plant Ecology in 1995 from the University of Sevilla (Spain). From 1995 to 1997, I did my postdoc at the former Institute for Plant Conservation (now Plant Conservation Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa). I am currently an Associate Professor of Botany at the University of Cádiz, attached to the Department of Biology, where I lead the FEBIMED research group (https://sites.google.com/view/febimed/welcome). My main research interests are (i) the role of fire in the evolution of mediterranean plants; (ii) the ecology, biogeography and evolution of heathland plants; and (iii) the biodiversity and conservation of the herriza or Mediterranean heathland of the Strait of Gibraltar. My interest on carnivorous plants awoke six years ago, when I decided to use Drosophyllum lusitanicum, the paradigm of plant singularity of the herriza, to understand the importance of fire in the ecology of these Mediterranean heathlands. I co-supervised Maria Paniw's PhD thesis with my colleague Dr Roberto Salguero-Gómez and several interesting papers have come out of that PhD (see FEBIMED group website). We knew that Drosophyllum was a rare plant because it was carnivorous, but what we did not know is that Drosophyllum is so rare among carnivorous plants!

August 2017