biology

Liliana M. Dávalos

Liliana M. Dávalos is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Liliana M. Dávalos rather than just read about it. In short: Liliana M. Dávalos is a Colombian-born evolutionary and conservation biologist, who is currently living in the United States.

Key takeaways

Liliana M. Dávalos belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Liliana M. Dávalos to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Liliana M. Dávalos from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Liliana M. Dávalos is a Colombian-born evolutionary and conservation biologist, who is currently living in the United States. Her career as a researcher and professor have focused on bats as model systems and on tropical deforestation.

Education Dávalos graduated from the University of Valle, in Colombia, in 1997. In 2001 she was awarded an MA from Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the Ecology and Evolution Biology program. She continued on at Columbia University to earn her PhD in 2004.

Career Dávalos has conducted research at a number of institutions, including her undergraduate work at the Universidad del Valle. Her post-doctoral work in the field of genomics was done at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), New York, and at the University of Arizona. Dávalos has been an assistant professor and lecturer at Columbia University, the Open University (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom), and Stony Brook University. In 2018, Dávalos secured the position of tenured professor at Stony Brook University, and has continued to maintained her connection to the AMNH as a Research Associate in the Division of Vertebrate Zoology. In the course of her career, Dávalos has been bestowed with honors as a Fellow of the Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium, and the National Academy of Sciences as an Education Fellow in the Life Sciences. Along with this recognition, she has been invited to speak at a number of institutions, including the American Museum of Natural History, Humboldt University of Berlin, ICESI Cali, the University of Basel, and her alma mater Columbia University.

Research Though Dávalos's breadth of work has included an array of fields, her primary research efforts focus on the evolution of physiological and molecular traits. Her work utilizes Neotropical bats as a model system for the development of molecular, morphological, and ecological characteristics. Other disciplines practiced by Dávalos include systematics, bioinformatics, geospatial analysis, and the assessment of conservation policy. Notable works by Dávalos have included those on the evolution of frugivorous bats, which has helped illuminate the relationship between species diversification rates and novel morphological characteristics. Her attention to the analysis of methods has produced a substantive critique on the conflict of morphological and molecular tools for studying evolutionary processes, and demonstrated how common sampling bias can drastically affect conservation assessments. She has also performed numerous studies on how conflict and anti-narcotics policies impact deforestation in South America.

Grants and lines of inquiry Evolution of the longevity in bats (NSF) Chance or necessity? (frugivore and plant interactions) (NSF) Genomic sensory innovation in bats (NSF) Uncovering skin immune proteins as predictors of resistance to White Nose Syndrome (USFWS) Development of advanced spatial data analysis and visualization methods (NSF)

Outreach and press From Fog of War to Flames of Peace—Wildfires Surge in Post-FARC Colombia El Estado Aplazado Humans Doomed Caribbean's 'Lost World' of Ancient Mammals Equilibrium A Distant Dream for Island Bats A New Family Tree For One Of The World's Most Endangered Mammals

Publications Dávalos has authored over 60 publications

Armenteras, D., Schneider, L., & Dávalos, L. M. (2019). Fires in protected areas reveal unforeseen costs of Colombian peace. Nature ecology & evolution, 3(1), 20. Sadier, A., Davies, K. T., Yohe, L. R., Yun, K., Donat, P., Hedrick, B. P., ... & Sears, K. E. (2018). Multifactorial processes underlie parallel opsin loss in neotropical bats. eLife, 7, e37412. Dávalos, L. M., Lancaster, W. C., Núñez-Novas, M. S., León, Y. M., Lei, B., Flanders, J., & Russell, A. L. (2019). A coalescent-based estimator of genetic drift, and acoustic divergence in the Pteronotus parnellii species complex. Heredity, 122(4), 417. Tavares, V. D. C., Warsi, O. M., Balseiro, F., Mancina, C. A., & Dávalos, L. M. (2018). Out of the Antilles: Fossil phylogenies support reverse colonization of bats to South America. Journal of biogeography, 45(4), 859–873. Rojas, D., Ramos Pereira, M. J., Fonseca, C., & Dávalos, L. M. (2018). Eating down the food chain: generalism is not an evolutionary dead end for herbivores. Ecology Letters, 21(3), 402–410. Yohe, L. R., Liu, L., Dávalos, L. M., & Liberles, D. A. (2019). Protocols for the Molecular Evolutionary Analysis of Membrane Protein Gene Duplicates. In Computational Methods in Protein Evolution (pp. 49–62). Humana Press, New York, NY. Alvarez, M. D. (2001). Could peace be worse than war for Colombia's forests?. Environmentalist, 21(4), 305–315.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Liliana M. Dávalos

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Liliana M. Dávalos claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Liliana M. Dávalos before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Liliana M. Dávalos ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Liliana M. Dávalos

In research: Liliana M. Dávalos appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Liliana M. Dávalos in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Liliana M. Dávalos is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century Colombian biologists, Academics of the Open University, Colombian expatriates in England, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Liliana M. Dávalos outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Liliana M. Dávalos in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Liliana M. Dávalos means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Liliana M. Dávalos out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Liliana M. Dávalos in simple terms?

Liliana M. Dávalos is a Colombian-born evolutionary and conservation biologist, who is currently living in the United States.

Why does Liliana M. Dávalos matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Liliana M. Dávalos?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Liliana M. Dávalos.