Research

My main interests lie in the interface between molecular biology, evolutionary biology and spatial statistics offered by the field of landscape genetics and biogeographical modeling. A common thread throughout my research has been the relationship between population dynamics and the environment.

During my MSc (2005) and PhD (2010) I used biochemical and molecular genetic markers to study the differentiation, geographic distribution and ecological requirements of a genus of aquatic salamanders from Europe. This allowed the resolution of the phylogenetic relationship between these closely related species, a problem that had been unresolved since the species were described more than a hundred years ago (Arntzen et al. 2007; Espregueira Themudo et al. 2009). 

I was also able to study in detail the distribution of two of the species that share a border for over 700 km, determining the ecological requirements of the two species and measuring the amount of gene flow present in different areas of this contact (hybrid) zone (Espregueira Themudo and Arntzen 2007b; Arntzen & Espregueira Themudo 2008; Espregueira Themudo et al. 2012).

For my first Post-doc (2009-2012), I moved on to study the spatial distribution of veterinary diseases. For this I used both register data from the highly detailed of veterinary diseases in Denmark and molecular data produced specifically for these studies (Ahmed et al. 2012, Solomonsen et al. 2013). This allowed determining areas where diseases such as mink plasmacytosis in mink and campylobacter in broilers have higher risk of infection and which ecological and/or management factors may be contributing to these higher risks in those areas (Espregueira Themudo et al 2010, 2011; Chowdhury et al. 2012a;b, 2013).

I was involved in analysing differences in genetic diversity of current and historic populations of honeybees using next generation sequencing in order to better understand whether genetic diversity, particularly in immunity-related genes has had an influence on susceptibility to diseases. For this project I learned ancient DNA techniques that I also used in recovering and analysing DNA from African antelopes (Espregueira Themudo et al, 2015) and Greenlandic mummies. I am also working in psychiatric genomics attempting to better understand the genetic determinants of several psychiatric disorders and I have used Ancestry Informative Markers to caracterize the population in Greenland (Espregueira Themudo et al 2016; Pastkis et al 2017).