Isabel C Barrio

Research interests

I am a field ecologist interested in understanding how ecosystems work and how they respond to changes. Tundra ecosystems provide an excellent model system to address these questions because they are, in principle, relatively simple and they are changing fast. In these systems, herbivores play a central role and plant-herbivore interactions can have cascading effects to the whole ecosystem. I am particularly interested in understanding how different species of herbivores coexist and how the effects of different herbivores combine to influence ecosystem responses.

The interactions between herbivores and the plants they eat differ depending on where and when herbivory happens. Given this context dependency, ecologists need to collect data at multiple sites, across broad environmental gradients to be able to address more general questions. In this sense, coordinated research efforts are an essential part of terrestrial ecology, and more so in remote locations like many tundra sites. In 2013, together with some colleagues we established the Herbivory Network, a collaborative research network that aims at understanding the role of herbivores in arctic and alpine ecosystems. Within the network we have been developing several projects, for example on the patterns and drivers of herbivore diversity in the Arctic, synthesizing knowledge on herbivory studies in the Arctic and describing patterns of invertebrate herbivory across the tundra biome.