COMPADRE retorna a su origen: Mexico (some 30 years later)

by Rob Salguero-Gomez on Sep 30, 2014

COMPADRE was born in Mexico over 30 years ago. The support of the Mexican and British governments allowed the collaboration of Prof Miguel Franco (now at Plymouth University, UK) and Prof Jonathan Silvertown (now at University of Edinburg, UK) who, in order to address demographic aspects of the plant kingdom from a comparative perspective, instituted what is now known as COMPADRE 1.0. One of us (Rob S-G) was recently invited to run a workshop on plant and animal demography at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Xochimilco by Prof Jordan Golubov. There, I also had the pleasure of interacting with students of Prof Maria del Carmen Mandujano, at the UNAM. Among other aspects, the students learned about how to go from the field to the analysis of stage-structured models, including population matrix models and integral projection models. I also took the opportunity to walk them through the “evolution” of COMPADRE, its ancestral lines, and current stage (version 3.0). This constitutes "Phase II" of COMPADRE: learning users how to access and take advantage of the wealth of data in COMPADRE. At night, the future steps of COMPADRE and COMADRE were discussed with Prof Teresa Valverde (UNAM, science committee member), involving potential venues to obtain financing for COMPADRE in Mexico. Last but not least, and literally a few minutes before leaving the beautiful Ciudad de Mexico, I met Prof Ana Mendoza (UNAM) a former collaborator of COMPADRE (1.0). It has been truly mind-blowing to experience first-hand the quality of field research done in Mexico, and to be able to share with Mexican researchers the latest progress of COMPADRE 3.0. rob s-g