Urbina-Cardona

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.