Innately fascinated by all things evolution, I grew a special passion for vertebrates during my bachelor’s and ended up studying lizards most of the time. After I completed my PhD at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, I was a postdoc at the Complutense University in Madrid. Now, at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, I have an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship. I am interested in macroecological patterns and processes—particularly diversification dynamics and morphological evolution—from a phylogenetic perspective. In my work, as in life outside it, one question always leads me: why are things the way they are? Put simply, my research seeks to understand how species adapt to their surroundings, and how the history of our planet has shaped the evolution of all living beings on it, using vertebrates and especially lizards as a model of study. Lizards thrive particularly well in deserts, and a big part of my work is to study how extreme conditions, such as those in arid systems, determine the biology of organisms inhabiting them.
In my day-to-day work, besides constantly learning programming (mainly R) and good coding practices, I love returning to the classics and getting inspired by those who dedicated their professional lives to understanding the world we live in.

ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hector-Tejero-Cicuendez

Google Scholar:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BOHq4CgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao