After a very, VERY long delay the site is finally updated!

This post is long overdue. I have finally updated my affiliation (finished my postdoc at the NHM and moved to Durham University, again as a PDRA), and added the latest papers I have published since the last update. I will try as best as I can to keep this updated, but don’t expect much from me ;-)

If you are interested, here it goes a quick recap of what happened in this meantime:

• Between late 2020 and late 2023, I spent 3 amazing years at the Natural History Museum in London, working on a Leverhulme Grant that aimed at assessing the evolutionary dynamics (both in terms of diversification and phenotypic evolution) of two groups of marine mammals (namely cetaceans and pinnipeds). My time there was great, and in addition to the science I was able to become friends with such amazing people. There were three products out of the research I was involved:
  • In the first paper, we assessed the adaptive landscape of body size evolution in cetaceans, published in Current Biology;
  • In the second paper, we propose a new phylogenetic hypothesis for pinnipeds, including many fossil species, as well as discuss diversification and biogeographical patterns for the group. This paper was an Editor’s choice in Evolution;
  • Lastly, in a side project we tested the accuracy of the Ecomorphotype hypothesis for phocids, showing that it does not seem to be a useful way to describe fossil species in this group. This paper was published in PeerJ.
    

During this time I was also involved in other studies:

• In a study led by my friend Deepak, I helped analysing the speciation and extinction dynamics for a group of snakes, in a study that was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society;
• I was also involved in a study that assessed the differences of macroevolutionary patterns of body size and shape, focussed on the role of dietary habits in driving these patterns. This paper was led by Alice Maher, and was published in Nature Communications.
• I also worked along with Guillaume Chomicki in two other projects:
  • We first analysed the impact of mutualistic interactions on the evolution of traits that are not directly involved in those interactions in a group of plants. This was published in Ecology Letters;
  • I was also involved in another study where we show that a very interesting trapping mechanism emerged from the independent evolution of different traits involved in such mechanism in a genus of carnivorous plants. We were also fortunate to have our study featured in the cover of Science.
    

Following my period at the NHM and a failed application back in Brazil, I started another position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate under Guillaume’s supervision in Durham, where I will be working on assessing when, where, and why different types of mutualistic interactions break down across the plant tree of life. Exciting things coming up soon!

If you want to check more details (abstracts, links, etc.), head to the publications page!