People

Alfonso was born in Huelva, in the southwest of Spain. Since he was a child, he was fascinated with the marine realm and moved to Australia in 2014 to study a Bachelor of Science majoring in marine biology at JCU. During his studies, he became fascinated with biodiversity patterns. He did an honours project looking at the ecological processes behind patterns of abundance of species under the supervision of Sean Connolly and Tobin Northfield. He is currently doing his PhD at JCU under the supervision of Sean Connolly, David Bellwood, Hugh Sweatman and Mike Emslie, looking at the spatial and temporal biodiversity patterns of reef fishes from an ecological and phylogenetic perspective. In his project, he aims to compare community ecological and phylogenetic measures of biodiversity, and to evaluate which processes are driving these biodiversity patterns.