J. Nicolás Urbina-Cardona is an ecologist from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia who obtained his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from UNAM, Mexico. His research focuses on how human-induced landscape alterations affect neotropical amphibian and reptile assemblages, integrating approaches from community ecology, functional ecology, and landscape ecology. Early in his career, he worked with a conservation NGO contributing to biodiversity conservation public policy, including biodiversity offsets and watershed management plans. For the past 14 years, Dr. Urbina-Cardona has served as associate professor at the Departamento de Ecología y Territorio, Facultad de Estudios Ambientales y Rurales of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, where he teaches biodiversity conservation and herpetology. He held the position of regional chair for Colombia of the IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group for a decade, coordinating extinction risk assessments for over 800 species and facilitating their adoption by the Colombian government. He also worked toward consolidating the National Program for the Conservation of Amphibians with the Ministry of Environment and supported updates to the IUCN´s Global Amphibian Conservation Action Plan. Nicolás has published more than 120 scientific articles and book chapters, co-advised 45 Ph.D. and Master's students, and serves as associate editor for three scientific journals in conservation biology. Recently, he has expanded his interests to include scientific communication and outreach.
Carlos A. Navas is a biologist from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, institution where he also obtained a master's degree. Since these early steps, he has engaged in researching amphibian adaptation to high elevation, also a central topic in his Ph. D. thesis at University of Connecticut. He moved to Brazil, originally to occupy a postdoctoral position at the University of São Paulo and was later hired at the Department of Physiology at the Biosciences Institute. In Brazil Carlos expanded research interests to other models and systems, including arthropods and reptiles, mostly developing projects at the disciplinary convergence among behaviour, physiology, and ecology. Carlos has published about 200 scientific texts including peer reviewed articles, natural history notes, and book chapters, and has advised or co-advised about 25 doctoral students, nationally and internationally. He has occupied administrative positions at his institution, mainly in the context of graduate studies and outreach, and has composed the editorial boards of several journals in the areas of herpetology, physiology, and general science. Carlos maintains his interest in Physiological Ecology, but currently explores other aspects of science, including the perks and pains of interdisciplinary, and the communication of science to young audiences.
Alessandro Catenazzi's research interests are the systematics and conservation of Neotropical amphibians and reptiles and the ecological dimensions of biodiversity. For the first line of research, he works primarily in the Andes and the Amazon. He collaborates with colleagues in museums and other research institutions in describing new species and developing phylogenies of frogs from the mega-diverse eastern slopes of the Andes. He is interested in using phylogenies as a road map to compare physiological traits among species. He is also studying thermal preferences, tolerance to heat, and the influence of temperature on physiological functions, to understand how climate warming will affect these animals. Finally, a major theme of his current research is exploring fungal disease's effects on amphibians' ecology, a group experiencing staggering biodiversity losses worldwide. After documenting the collapse of a species-rich amphibian assemblage, he is interested in developing strategies to mitigate the impact of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis on surviving species.
Carla Piantoni earned her Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Sa n Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, and her Ph.D. in Sciences at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Between degrees, she worked as a Research Assistant at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, where her herpetological research overlapped with studies on marine sponges under Dr. Klaus Rützler, Research Zoologist and Curator of Porifera. During this period, she also edited the Annual Reports of the Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CCRE) and co-authored several publications on the ecology and systematics of marine sponges and other invertebrates. Throughout the years, her initial interest in the life history and thermal ecology of lizards expanded to include experimental approaches in behavioral ecology and evolutionary ecophysiology of ectothermic animals, culminating in research on how individual variability in behavior and eco-physiological preferences may shape responses to novel environments. Currently, Dr. Piantoni is based at the University of Hawai?i at Manoa, where she balances her research with mentoring graduate students, teaching, and coordinating first-year biology labs in the School of Life Sciences. Guiding young students in developing critical thinking has proven to be a significant responsibility, but an exceptionally fulfilling aspect of her academic role.
