Maribel Arenas Navarro

Where are you from?

I am from Mexico City and have lived in Morelia, Michoacán (Mexico) for six years.

What is your professional background?

I am a biologist who graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). I have always studied plants, and in my undergraduate degree, I started conducting conservation analyses of endemic cacti. Later I did a master's degree at UNAM about the macroecology and biogeography of legumes in Mexico. And during my Ph.D., I moved to Morelia to start my project about functional diversity in oaks. Recently I started a post-doctorate at the Institute for Research in Ecosystems and Sustainability (IIES) of the UNAM. My current project is about the functional strategies of oak seedlings and adults and their biogeochemical niches.

How did your interest in oaks start?

From my beginnings as a biologist, I really liked plants, and although my first trips to the field were in arid areas, I was inevitably amazed when I saw the oaks of Puebla and Oaxaca. It was not until later, in my master's degree, that I had the opportunity to visit some botanical gardens in the US and Canada and learn about northern oaks like Quercus robur, Q. lobata, and Q. laevis (which are famous for the shape of their leaves), and it made me much more interested in the diversity of forms and strategies of the Mexican oaks.

How did you come to join the IOS?

Searching for oak information online, I read several newsletters and found them interesting to learn about oaks worldwide.

Which is your favorite oak?

It is a challenging question. Quercus cualensis is a species that I really like; the area where it is found has some beautiful landscapes. The oaks that amaze me the most for their majesty in nature, but above all their acorns, are Q. insignis and Q. oocarpa.

An oak anecdote you would like to share?

A time before I started working with oaks on a field trip, I saw a mast year in a temperate forest in Sinaloa, Mexico. The floor was covered with thousands of acorns, and we saw squirrels jumping from one side to the other and many birds collecting acorns. It was beautiful. But since I've been working with oaks formally, I've never seen so many acorns again.