Cristina Garcia Perez

My research activity focuses on deciphering the influence of plant-animal dispersal interactions in driving forest natural regeneration. Recruitment success strongly depends on dispersal services provided by pollinators and frugivorous vertebrates, which in turn determine gene flow patterns across the landscape.

Specifically, I am interested in understanding what is the role of dispersal mutualisms in driving demographic expansions of chronically fragmented landscapes, and to what extent they shape the spatial distribution of the genetic variation in recently colonized sites. 

Future research projects pursue to combine genetic population models and genomic approaches -based on NGS- to understand the interplay between gene flow and local adaptation in driving natural regeneration patterns.