Cheers and welcome to the Jiménez’s Lab web site!
I would like to invite you to visit my web site. Here, I am showing the past and current research and the academic activities that I have developed during the last decades while interacting with students, colleagues, friends and companions. Thus, this is the result of a collective activity of progressing not alone, but with many people –some long-lasting friends- under quite diverse settings.
I am very thankful and I feel much fortunate for all these diverse enriching experiences and interactions! I grew up in towns in southern Chile, in a landscape of dense forests amid lakes and active volcanoes. Chile is a country of immense contrasts and many world records. Just to mention a few, it is the longest and thinnest country, has ecosystems ranging from the deepest trenches in the Pacific Ocean to some of the tallest mountains in the Andes; has the driest desert and the southernmost forests; the largest and one of the smallest of the mammals, including the smallest deer, the one with the softest fur and the oldest living marsupial; the largest flying bird, the largest woodpecker in the Americas and among the smallest of the birds. How could I be indifferent?
My interests in the outdoors and wildlife emerged early, fascinated by the bewildering diversity of insects, when working as a naturalist guide in national parks at the age of 15, but quickly expanded to be dominated by birds and mammals. At that early age I also learned taxidermy (displayed in diorams in a museum) and photography with a Peace Corp volunteer. My horizon broadened to applied and basic ecological research when entering college. During the summers, I worked as a naturalist guide all along Chile but chiefly on cruise ships in Patagonia, and participated in environmental impact assessments in many fascinating remote areas. I started my first job living for more than three years in the mountains studying the last wild chinchillas, supported by WWF and Chile’s Forest Service. Since then, I have studied many taxa and have addressed ecological questions, in diverse ecosystems mainly all along Chile, in Bolivia, and in the United States.
My formal training is in wildlife ecology and conservation. I did my undergraduate research on the behavioral ecology and community structure of raptors near Santiago (while at the Catholic University with Fabian Jaksic); my MS was on foxes coexistence and chinchilla conservation in northern Chile while at University of Florida (with Kent Redford), and mi Ph.D. on ducks breeding ecology in intensively farmed landscapes in North Dakota while at Utah State University (with Michael Conover and Raymond Dueser). In the academia I have served in a few universities in Chile and in the United States.
Central to my interests are the interactions among individuals and populations, with their environment and among these and the effects of humans. The ultimate hope of my research is to contribute to a better world for the humans and the non-humans. I am quite concerned about the environmental catastrophe that we have created. During my life I have experienced first hand dramatic changes in the environment. My special request to every one of you is to ask you to help protect whatever still remains after so much irrational depredations. All depends on our behavior to save our only planet, its unique biodiversity and as a result, our own species! This task is urgent!
MY PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
Enjoy my large collection of professional pictures of wild animals and plants! …next a few examples and themes…
