Pablo Marquet

External Professor, Science Steering Committee




Pablo Marquet is a Chilean Ecologist, recognized for his contributions in the fields of macroecology, theoretical ecology, conservation, and global change. He is known for his work on the scaling of abundance in communities, the evolution of body size on landmasses; connecting body size to area, evolution, and fitness, the development of metapopulation models in dynamic landscapes, the emergence of power laws in ecology and, the emergence of social complexity, and the impact of climate change upon biodiversity. Marquet was born in Santiago (Chile), received a Bachelor in Biology from the Universidad de Concepción in 1987 and a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico, in 1993. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and joined the faculty in 1994. He is Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a member of the Chilean Academy of Science, The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AmAcad), and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). 

Pablo Marquet´s lab is interested in several interacting research programs. From the emergence of ecologies, and the drivers affecting diversity in micro and macroorganisms, to the role of energy use, innovation and cumulative cultural evolution on human social complexity and sustainability, to the integration of theories in ecology, the impact of climate change upon biodiversity and the ecology and evolution of cancer. All these topics are held together under the umbrella of exploring, and understand biological complexity using tools from mathematics, physics, biology, and anthropology.


Primary Institution: Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Role/Title: Professor

Topics of Interest: Anthropology/Archaeology - Behavior - Biology - Environment/Climate Change - Evolution - Network Theory - Scaling - Science of Science - Social Science

Other Affiliations and Institutions: Instituto de Sistemas Complejos de Valparaiso (ISCV, President)

How SFI changes your mind: It is a solace for my mind...

When and how you first got involved with SFI: As a recurrent visitor to attend seminar back in the early 90s, then International Fellow and then External Faculty



Research Projects