Dr Parra-Sánchez is a Colombian ecologist who focuses on quantifying the effects of landscape- to regional-scale habitat loss along the rare-to-widespread species continuum. Addressing global biodiversity loss requires a robust understanding of how species and populations are affected by human-driven pressures across space and time. However, the impact is not equitable as widespread species are more resilient to deforestation and climate change, whilst range-restricted species are likely more prone to local-to-global extinction events.
In conservation policy, endemism is a well-rooted concept that operationalizes the rare-to-widespread ecological continuum. At the extreme, microendemic species (i.e. endemic species that occupy extremely narrow spatial ranges), with many restricted to a single population, face global extinction from any local-scale loss. Dr Parra-Sánchez aims to unravel the spatial scale at which microendemism becomes ecologically meaningful. This is important because for such microendemics, traditional conservation approaches that focus on large protected areas often fail to overlap with their distribution, and conservation planning is challenging since their ranges are often poorly documented or unknown.
Dr Parra-Sánchez is a Research Fellow at the Darwin-Hamied Centre for Biodiversity and Population with special focus on New World orchids, which are the second most diverse group of flowering plants with their global epicentre of diversity in the Neotropics, and which have highly specialised biology and enormous cultural and economic importance. His research aims to deliver a step-change in our understanding of endemic biogeography, conservation risks and actions, supporting the formal assessment of orchid species by the IUCN Red List, and guiding spatial conservation planning in biodiverse but under-protected regions.
Selected Publications
Parra-Sánchez, E., Latombe, G., Mills, S.C., Socolar, J.B., Edwards, F.A. et al. (2025). Tropical land-use change disrupts zeta-diversity across taxa. Global Change Biology, 31(5), e70245.
Parra-Sánchez, E., Rincón-Useche, C., Díaz-Jiménez, S. and Baquero, L. (2025). Lepanthes angelae, a new species discovered under a diversity survey in the Colombian Eastern Cordillera. Phytotaxa, 687(2), 287–294.
Parra-Sánchez, E. and Edwards, D.P. (2024). Spatial extent predicts Andean epiphyte biodiversity responses to habitat loss. Journal of Biogeography, 51(7), 1315–1327.4
Parra-Sánchez, E., Restrepo, E., Barrera, Y., Moreno, S et al. (2024). Lepanthes chalalensis (Pleurothallidinae), a new species endemic to the Santander Department in Colombia. Lankesteriana, 24(2), 131–140.2
Parra-Sánchez, E., Freckleton, R.P., Hethcoat, M.G., Ochoa-Quintero, J.M. et al. (2024). Transformation of natural habitat disrupts biogeographical patterns of orchid diversity. Biological Conservation, 292, 110538.5