My research can be framed within the broad disciplines of macroecology and community ecology. I am generally interested in understanding and modeling species distributions and patterns of biodiversity including species richness but also phylogenetic (i.e. diversity in the evolutionary history contained in a community) and functional (i.e. diversity in life history traits and ecological characteristics of species within a community) diversity. I think that using a multi-facetted view of biodiversity can help us link theory and practice in a more effective way than simply looking at species richness. This is a necessary step in predicting potential effects of climate change on the future of biodiversity, which is one of my motivations. Scales of study go from metacommunities (i.e. several communities potentially connected through dispersal) to continents, to global. I am not particularly attached to one taxon or geographic region, but rather to the idea of identifying common mechanisms, patterns or analysis strategies that can be broadly applied to different ecological systems. I have therefore studied a variety of organisms (birds, plants, fish, mammals) in different regions (Chile, California, France, South Africa, and more recently South East Asia, Ecuador, and sub-Saharan Africa), and I am always happy to explore new horizons with students and colleagues.