Ignacio (Nacho) Juarez Martínez

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2018
Use of computer vision and animal behaviour for penguin conservation
Ignacio.juarezmartinez@bnc.ox.ac.uk
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Academic Profile

My main academic research topic is animal conservation but my interests in science are very broad. This is partly why I have a BSc in Biology (5 years, 2012) and a BSc in Biochemistry (2 years, 2013). My enthusiasm for animal conservation and the outdoors finally overrode my passion for the molecular world and did a Masters by Research in Oxford University (2 years, 2015) under the supervision of Tim Guildford.

My research has been mainly focused on seabird tracking using different loggers like GPS and GLS (sun-level geolocators). In my Masters thesis I used the latter to reveal the winter migration of the Hutton’s Shearwater and afterwards I have also collaborated with the Christmas Island Seabird project to find out the same about the Abbotts booby. In both cases, we are interested in route as well as phenology, the relation of migration with the breeding cycle and other aspects of migratory ecology.

Also as part of my Masters thesis I analysed an inherent flaw to GLS technology around the equinoxes and devised a way to minimize the amount of data deleted in order to avoid it.

Current Research

My current research also makes use of technological advancements for the acquisition of biologically-meaningful data to be used for conservation. In this case I am using time-lapse imagery from camera-trap data in order to monitor the breeding ecology of penguin colonies all over the Antarctic Peninsula and Subantarctic Islands. The plan is to not only study penguins from a conservation perspective but also to include their behavioural ecology in order to understand how can the different threats impact their populations.

Publications

Vázquez, A. G., Musing, L., Nekaris, K. A. I., & Martínez, I. J. (2016). El efecto de los vídeos de YouTube en la percepción de especies exóticas como mascotas potenciales. Chronica naturae, (6), 13-23.

Shoji, A., Aris-Brosou, S., Culina, A., Fayet, A., Kirk, H., Padget, O., Juarez Martínez, I., Boyle, D., Nakata, T., Perrins, C.M. and Guilford, T., (2015) Breeding phenology and winter activity predict subsequent breeding success in a trans-global migratory seabird. Biology Letters, 11(10), 20150671.

Macintyre, L., Zhang, T., Viegelmann, C., Juarez Martínez, I., Cheng, C., Dowdells, C., Ramadan Abdelmohsen, U., Gernert, C., Hentschel, U., and Edrada-Ebel, RA. (2014) Metabolomic Tools for Secondary Metabolite Discovery from Marine Microbial Symbionts. Marine Drugs, 12, 3416-3448; doi:10.3390/md12063416

Contact information

Department of Zoology

Orchid ID

Twitter Account: @PenguiNacho