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Dr Luz Boyero

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr Luz Boyero
Campus: Townsville
Telephone: +61 7 4781 4858
Fax: +61 7 4725 1570
Email: luz.boyero@jcu.edu.au

Luz Boyero School of Marine and Tropical Biology JCU Research Associate Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Senior Research Fellow (January 2008 – current)

JCU Postdoctoral Fellow (2003 – 2007)

Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panamá.

I completed my PhD in 2002 in the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (Madrid, Spain), working on the effect of spatial scale on patterns and processes in stream macroinvertebrate communities. As part of my PhD, I conducted studies in Panamá and Costa Rica, which was the beginning of my fascination for the tropics. In 2003 I obtained a postdoctoral fellowship to work with Professor Richard Pearson at JCU. I've recently obtained the JCU Postdoctoral Fellowship and established a link with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panamá. I'm also collaborating with more than 30 stream ecologists all around the world in a project funded by the National Geographic Society, in which I am the principal investigator.

Member of the: Association for Tropical Biology (ATB), Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), North American Benthological Society (NABS), International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology (SIL), Spanish Limnological Society (AEL), Movimiento de Investigaciones Biológicas en Panamá (MIBio).

Research Interests

Stream ecology, especially tropical streams.

Recent and Current Projects Include

  • Effect of biodiversity on ecosystem processes in streams, with especial focus on the leaf breakdown process and the associated fauna (shredders)

  • Latitudinal gradients of biodiversity

  • Species interactions at the individual level and consequences at the ecosystem level in streams

  • Assessment of stream water quality in developing tropical countries, especially in Latin America

  • Influence of the spatial scale of study on the recognition of patterns and processes in stream macroinvertebrate communities

  • Effect of environmental heterogeneity on stream macroinvertebrate communities

  • Conservation and sexual selection in amphibians

Recent and Currently Supervised Projects

  • Regina Camacho, 2005-6 (Honours). Stream leaf litter processing in two tropical regions: comparing shredder efficiency and processing rates

  • Mikis Bastian, 2005 (Honours). The influence of diversity on ecosystem processes: shredder and leaf species interactions in a stream ecosystem

  • Kaylene Allan, 2005 (Graduate Diploma). Intra-specific interactions in a tropical shredder guild: extrapolating from individual behaviour to the ecosystem level

Top 10 publications

Full list of publications

Boyero L, 2000. Towards a global stream ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15: 390-391

Bosch J, Boyero L, 2004. Reproductive stage and phonotactic preferences of female midwife toads (Alytes cisternasii). Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology 55: 251-256

Cheshire K, Boyero L, Pearson RG, 2005. Food webs in tropical Australian streams: shredders are not scarce. Freshwater Biology 50: 748-769

Boyero L, Rincón PA, Bosch J, 2006. Case selection by a limnephilid caddisfly [Potamophylax latipennis (Curtis)] in response to different predators. Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology 59: 364-372

Bosch J, Rincón PA, Boyero L, Martínez-Solano I, 2006. Effects of introduced salmonids on a montane population of Iberian frogs. Conservation Biology 20: 180-189

Boyero L, Pearson RG, Bastian M, 2007. How biological diversity influences ecosystem function: the separate role of species richness and evenness. Ecological Research 22: 551-558

Bastian M, Pearson RG, Boyero L, 2008. Effects of diversity loss on ecosystem function across trophic levels and ecosystems: a test in a detritus-based tropical food web. Austral Ecology 33: 301-306

Boyero L, Rincón PA, Pearson RG. 2008. Effects of a predatory fish on a tropical detritus-based food web. Ecological Research 23: 649-655

Boulton AJ, Boyero L, Covich AP, Dobson MK, Lake PS, Pearson RG, 2008. Are tropical streams ecologically different from temperate streams? In: Tropical Stream Ecology (Ed. Dudgeon D), Academic Press, San Diego (Aquatic Ecology Series): 257-284

Boyero L, Ramirez A, Dudgeon D, Pearson RG. Are tropical streams really different? Journal of the North American Benthological Society (in press)

Contact Details

Dr Luz Boyero

Campus: Townsville

Telephone: +61 7 4781 4858

Fax: +61 7 4725 1570

Email: luz.boyero@jcu.edu.au