[2] Ramírez conducted ecological fieldwork at the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica, including during graduate school as a masters and doctoral student working with Catherine Pringle.
[2] Ramírez's research focuses on freshwater invertebrates, particularly in natural and urban tropical streams in Puerto Rico,[7] Costa Rica,[5] Mexico,[8] and elsewhere.
For example, together they published research combining observational and experimental laboratory and field approaches to show that natural gradients in phosphorus availability alter organic matter decomposition by microbial communities in tropical streams.
Ramírez and his colleagues showed that urbanization depletes macroinvertebrate diversity in tropical streams, leading to reduced rates of organic matter decomposition.
[7] After a severe drought in 2015, Ramírez and colleagues showed that streams in Luquillo Experimental Forest underwent drying and became intermittent, leading to anoxic conditions and altering invertebrate communities.