Incoming Pembroke Fellow Dr Roberto Salguero-Gómez Receives Elton Prize in Animal Ecology

We are delighted to report that Dr Roberto Salguero-Gómez, who will take up a Biology Fellowship at Pembroke in September 2018, has received the Elton Prize from the British Ecological Society (BES). The prize is awarded each year to the best paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology, which has been written by an early career author at the start of their research and is selected by the Senior Editors of the Journal.

The paper in question was titled ‘COMADRE: a global database of animal demography’. Alongside his co-authors, Dr Salguero-Gómez proposed a new animal matrix database called COMADRE, which includes 1625 population projection matrices that offer demographic information for 345 animal species. The tool addresses a significant need amongst evolutionary ecologists, population biologists and scientists involved in management and conservation: by synthesizing the vast amount of accumulated demographic information in research.

The Editors felt that ‘the paper fills an important knowledge gap in animal ecology, providing the missing information to perform demographic analyses at both intra- and inter- specific levels.’ For this prize, Dr Salguero-Gómez received £250, a year’s subscription to the Journal and the opportunity to present his work at the BES Annual Meeting. We celebrate his recent success, and look forward to welcoming him to the Pembroke community in 2018.

Dr Salguero-Gómez is currently the leader of SalGo Team research group. Speaking of his research, he states: ‘My ultimate goal is to develop an integrative academic research plan using biochemical, anatomic and physiological approaches to examine demographic aspects of an organism' life cycle through a combination angles including field and lab work, as well as ecological modelling and comparative biology.’ Find out more about his current work here.