For more than two decades, the labs of Jorge M. Lobo, Joaquín Hortal, Pedro Aragón, Alberto Jiménez-Valverde, and, more recently, Luis Pertierra, have formed a long-standing collaborative network dedicated to understanding how life is organized on Earth. Together, we explore the fundamental patterns that shape where species live, how their populations change over time, and how communities of organisms assemble and evolve. We also examine one of the most pressing questions of our time: how global environmental change is altering the natural world and what this means for the future of biodiversity. Our research brings together a wide range of perspectives, combining field data, ecological theory, and advanced modeling to uncover the mechanisms that drive biodiversity across landscapes and through time. This integrative approach allows us not only to describe how nature works today, but also to reconstruct past dynamics and anticipate what may happen under future scenarios. Specifically, we aim to:

• Integrate multiple biological traits (physiological, morphological, behavioral, and ecological) across individuals, populations, and species, to understand how organisms interact with their environments.

• Develop and apply theoretical and predictive models that bridge empirical observations with the processes behind biodiversity patterns, from local scales to continental ones.

• Assess and forecast the impacts of global change, helping to identify vulnerable species, anticipate shifts in ecosystems, and provide scientific insights that inform conservation strategies.

In summary, our collaborative work seeks to understand the complexity of life on Earth and to contribute knowledge essential for preserving it in a rapidly changing world.

Lead by Vicente Ortuño, the group based at the University of Alcalá (UAH) focuses on uncovering the biodiversity that inhabits soil and subterranean ecosystems, both endogean and hypogean. Our research aims to reveal how species adapted to these hidden environments live, interact, and persist, as well as the environmental conditions that shape their distribution. By integrating biological traits, community structure, and key abiotic factors, the group works to build a comprehensive picture of underground biodiversity, its dynamics, its remarkable variety, and the ecological roles these organisms play. This perspective also highlights the importance of subterranean habitats as natural refuges in the face of climate change, and their value for understanding broader biogeographical patterns.

Lead by Raimundo Real, the group is based at Málaga University (UMA) and is a leader in chorotype analysis, which reveals common patterns in species distribution. The group also invests significant effort in developing and applying species distribution models, with the Favorability Function being its most notable contribution in this field. Currently, we analyze the impacts of global change on biodiversity; update the atlas of terrestrial mammals of Spain; conduct research to support the management and sustainability of game resources and marine environments; examine the ecological dimension of Indigenous peoples; and explore patterns in the biogeography of zoonotic diseases that are useful for public-health prevention.