GENERAL INTERESTS
I favor an interdisciplinary approach in my research and collaborate with a wide network of specialists in different topics. Much of my research is field-based and incorporates elements of population and community ecology. My work combines various techniques including the tagging and tracking of individually-marked organisms, experimental manipulations in the field, fluxes quantification between ecosystems, ecosystem services, direct observations and modelling.
POND ECOLOGY
A Postdoctoral opportunity took me to the Freie Universität Berlin where I am working with Prof. Jeschke. My work aims at 1) understanding the roles of land-use surrounding small freshwater ecosystems (ponds) on macroinvertebrate communities, food-webs and ecosystem functioning; 2) exploring the consequences of drought on macroinvertebrate communities; 3) investigating how spatial arrangement and the intrinsic ecological characteristics of the ponds are important determinants of overall biodiversity patterns at the landscape scale.
We study two networks of ponds established in two different types of landscapes, the first one is located in an intensively used agricultural area and the second one along a rural-urban gradient in Berlin.
This work is part of the work package Aquatic-Terrestrial Coupling within the collaborative project “Bridging in Biodiversity Science - BIBS” (www.bbib.org/bibs-project.html). The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF.
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I am deeply interested in the consequences of biological invasions, particularly in freshwater ecosystems. I have been studying several species in their non-native environment both for population dynamics and trophic ecology (red-swamp crayfish, marbled crayfish, wels, brown and rainbow trout). Also, in 2016, I joined InDyNet, a collaborative project focusing on the dynamics of invasive species.
BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS
FISH ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION
Variability within natural populations plays a major role in maintaining functional diversity in communities and ecosystems. The marble trout (Salmo marmoratus) is a species of great conservation concern given its restricted geographical area. Few populations persist in the Adriatic basin, threatened by the impacts of global change (increase of the frequency and intensity of flood events) and by biological invasions. During my PhD, I worked on the determinants of trophic variability of this species both at the population and individual levels to understand the underlying mechanisms of cannibalism and I explored the consequences on the population dynamics.
Beyond the fantastic marble trout, I have been working on the effects of river restoration on fish communities (France) and on the European eel for conservation purposes.
