João Vitor S. Messeder

Welcome!

I'm a PhD candidate and a Fulbright scholar in the Ecology program at The Pennsylvania State University (USA), supervised by Dr. Tomás Carlo and Dr. Hong Ma.

I grew up in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil - a state famous for its mountains covered in Campos Rupestres (which you can see in the photo above).

I completed my master's degree in Plant Biology and bachelor's degree in Biology at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, supervised by Dr. Fernando Silveira and Dr. Tadeu Guerra. 

Since 2016 my research interests have been on plant-animal interactions, more specifically the ecology and evolution of frugivory and seed dispersal.
For my undergraduate honors thesis I investigated the secondary seed dispersal of Miconia irwinii (Melastomataceae), a fleshy fruited treelet endemic to campo rupestre.
My master's research involved developing a quantitative framework to identify keystone plant resources for frugivorous birds across the Neotropics - which received the Peter Ashton Prize for outstanding paper published in Biotropica. Additionally, I conducted a meta-analytic review on Miconia as a keystone resource in the Neotropics.

My previous findings naturally led me to question how the amazing diversity of fleshy fruits have evolved. Thus, for my PhD, I'm integrating evolutionary ecology with plant phylogenomics to understand how shared evolutionary history influences the evolution of fleshy fruit traits, and how fruit-trait variability influences frugivory interactions and seed dispersal outcomes. 

Welcome and stay tuned to find out more about my research!