We do research on which and where are the main sources of food for birds and how they exploit them. This includes the study of food search movements as well as migration between breeding and wintering areas. This information is essential to determine which are the most important factors affecting bird populations, as well as to define the most important areas for birds.

We look for the main factors, both physical and biological, explaining bird distribution and abundance in the sea at different time and spatial scales. Understanding these interactions allows the prediction of bird potential distrbutions as well as factors limiting them. This is a key knowledge to anticipate bird responses to environmental changes such as global warming.

Birds can act as dispersers or reservoirs of viruses and bacteria that are significant for human health, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter bacteria, or the West Nile virus. However, their role in the circulation and reemergence of these pathogens is quite unknown. Finding out ecological and evolutionary relationships between birds, parasites and pathogens is crucial to understand the impact that they may have on human health.

We do research on the levels of heavy metals and organic pollutants in marine bird communities to understand the impact of human activities on marine ecosystems. We are particularly interested in explaining pollutant levels from ecological factors such as trophic level or food search movements and the differential use of trophic networks. Finding out bioavailability and bioaccumulation processes is essential to understand ecotoxicological impact on marine ecosystems.

We are conducting research on evolutionary relationships and genetic structures of marine bird communities as well as on ecological and historical factors behind them. We are also using molecular techniques to sort out taxonomical uncertainties and to determine genetic health of threatened species and populations, which is key to assess management units (MU) or evolutionarily significant units (ESU).