Responsibilities

• Supervision of Ph.D. students
• Coordination of CENSOR staff of the UNAP

Research Interest

• Ecology and biogeography of marine fishes
• Ecology of the Humboldt Current Upwelling System

Abstract

• The littoral fishfauna of Northern Chile is strongly affected by El Niño/La Niña oceanographic events, with important consequences on the artisanal fishermen and their activity. Moreover most of these species are scarcely known in some aspects of their biology such as reproduction, trophic relationships and seasonality.
• Under the CENSOR programme the community structure of the fish communities associated to sandy bottoms of Chipana Beach, south of Iquique Port, and Las Machas/Chinchorro Beach, near Arica will be studied. Both places are representative sites of the coast of Northern Chile, and additionally important breeding and smolting places of several important fish resources.
• During the CENSOR programme we will study the community structure of fishes and its seasonal variation, changes and adaptations to non-periodical oceanographic events like El Niño, trophic relations between species and with the benthic invertebrate community. The data will also be discussed and related with information on physical/chemical and biological information of the water column obtained by other WP1 research groups working in the same area.

Keywords

• Sandy beach fish community