In Search of Sustainable Futures

My scientific journey began with birds. As a young ornithologist in the Brazilian Amazon, I was captivated by their diversity — why certain species lived where they did, how they had evolved across time and space, what their distributions revealed about the history of life in the tropics. Biogeography gave me the tools to pursue those questions, and for years birds were my window into the deep patterns of life on Earth.

But birds led me to plants, fish, and other organisms, because the questions I was asking couldn't be answered by studying one group in isolation. And understanding distribution patterns led inevitably to a harder question: what happens when those patterns are destroyed? That question pulled me into conservation science — not as a retreat from basic research, but as its logical continuation. If you spend long enough learning where species exist, you cannot avoid asking what it would take to keep them there.

Conservation, in turn, forced me to confront development. Protected areas fail without governance. Biodiversity loss accelerates where poverty is deepest. You cannot design effective conservation strategies without understanding the economic and political systems that shape land use. And so I crossed another boundary, into sustainable development — asking how societies can be reorganized so that environmental protection, economic prosperity, sound governance, and social inclusion reinforce rather than undermine each other.

Throughout this journey, I used concepts and methods from several disciplines but was also guided by the philosophical framework of Mario Bunge, whose scientific realism insists that disciplines are tools, not territories, and that rigorous science should follow problems wherever they lead.

I continue to work across all three fields, driven by the same questions that started my journey in the Amazon. This work has produced more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and nine co-edited books, with contributions to journals including Nature, Journal of Biogeography, Bioscience, Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Land Use Policy, and Ecological Economics.

This work has been recognized with the following honors and awards: Fellow of the American Ornithological Society (2009–present); Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award, American Ornithological Society (2019); Cooper Fellow, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Miami (2024); Young Latin American Biologist Award, RELAB (2005); Special Recognition, Environment Program, USAID-Brazil (2003); Merit Award to Young Scientists, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Brazil (1996); Ararajuba Award for Outstanding Contribution to Brazilian Ornithology, Brazilian Ornithological Society (1993).