I am a Brazilian marine biologist interested not just in how populations and communities can be structured, but also in the resilience of marine ecosystems related to perturbations that modify these habitats.
If you want to know more about my past and current research, I encourage you to scroll down and check it out!
In my most recent project, I analyzed the environmental factors and physical attributes of different marine lakes in Palau, Micronesia. With such a diversity of environments, marine lakes provide an amazing opportunity to evaluate the biological and evolutionary responses of individuals, populations, and communities. Because marine lakes have a recent formation (around 12,000 years ago), it is the best environment to understand the theory of island biogeography and the small island effects (SIE).
A B O U T M Y P R O J E C T:
Unraveling Small Island Effects (SIE) using environmental factors and physical attributes of marine lakes.
My main goal in my project is to analyze if there is a dynamic continuum of the physical attributes and environmental factors of marine lakes over time that blurs the distinction between meromictic (stratified) VS. holomictic (mixed) lakes and their dynamics, and analyze whether marine lakes can be fully considered marine islands, following similar small island effects (SIE) as islands and archipelagos have.
I am interested in studying the differences in the community structures of island-like environments and in trying to connect these different structures with the resilience of the ecosystem. I believe that this study will contribute to the conservation of island-like environments, e.g., marine lakes, as well as raise and refine the understanding of island biogeography theory and the small island effects.
I entered the Zoology master’s program at the University of São Paulo in 2019, continuing my work with jellyfish and Professor André C. Morandini. For this project, I wanted to conduct experiments focused on the temperature variation and how it influenced the asexual reproduction of four species of Scyphozoa: Aurelia coerulea, Cotylohiza tuberculata, Lychnorhiza lucerna, and Sanderia malayensis.
This project was intituled as:
Can climate change influence jellyfish blooms (Cnidaria, Discomedusae)?
I was able to analyze different temperature variations - using the predictions of the IPCC's last report - in the strobilation and other types of asexual reproduction for these species. This research can have positive effects on how we look into jellyfish blooms, not only on being events of public health issues but also in understanding more about these animals’ ecology!
I started my undergraduate course in biology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in 2014.
Since the beginning of the course, I focused my interests in marine zoology and ecology, entering Professor André C. Morandini’s lab in 2015 and completing my undergraduate course in 2018.
My concluding undergrad project - and the beginning of my scientific research - was:
Identification of species of colonial coronated scyphozoans (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa: Coronatae): the genus Linuche Eschscholtz, 1829.
In this project, I analyzed morphological traits from polyps that were labeled as Linuche unguiculata from different places. I assessed whether the morphology of these animals was similar or different, depending on their biogeographical range, and tried to solve the taxonomy issue with the genus, associating it with the animal's biogeography.
