Areas of Interest
Invasive species management,   Climate change adaptation,   Mediterranean Basin,   California / Baja California,   Australia  

My research focuses on understanding the patterns and processes shaping biodiversity and their implications for conservation in a changing world, with focus on Mediterranean ecosystems, and especially the Mediterranean Basin. I focus on biodiversity along species ranges and ecological gradients as well as in biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. This includes studies on both native and introduced species in natural, agricultural and urban environs. Currently, I am coordinating a large project aimed at running a conservation planning exercise in the Mediterranean Basin, combining biodiversity, threats, social and economic factors, together with scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Queensland (The Ecology Centre).

I am a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Biodiversity Research Group at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2002. Before then I was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University for three years, working with Harold Mooney, Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily, and collaborated with Tom Smith from the Center for Tropical Research at SFSU (currently at UCLA).