Dear reader, welcome to my work in progress website! I am a PhD student at the Research Center for Biodiversity and Genetic Resources of the Univeristy of Porto (CIBIO) and currently a pre-doctoral fellow at the Bell lab of the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington D.C.
I am broadly interested in studying the many different levels of reptile and amphibian biodiversity using evolutionary theory and genetic tools. Past and current projects have focused on conservation genetics, the evolutionary history of species and understanding the genetic architecture of adaptive traits. I am also interested in developing and applying new genomic techniques and bioinformatic solutions, especially related to non-model species and large genomes.
For my thesis I am looking at genomic signals of adaptation in two different amphibian study systems. Together with my main thesis advisor Guillermo Velo-Antón (CIBIO) and NMNH curator Rayna Bell we are looking at the shift from larviparity to viviparity within Salamandra salamandra using RNAseq and exome capture methods to find the genes involved in this remarkable adaptive shift. Together with co-advisors Anna Savage at the University of Central Florida and Rob Fleischer at the Center for Conservation Genomics we are looking at Bd-resistance across leopard frogs using a variety of genetic methods.
