Ana Filipa Da Silva Pereira Machado Fili

Biography

"I am dedicated to understanding and predicting the role of landscape characteristics on biodiversity towards a better knowledge of the ecological and evolutionary processes involved. I am particularly interested in how anthropogenic disturbances influence native species, namely on how non-native native species and habitat loss can impact the persistence of threatened native species. I consider these aspects very challenging since freshwater biodiversity 1) is highly dependent of wetted habitats increasingly degraded and fragmented, 2) is highly threatened by climate change and other anthropogenic impacts as biotic homogenization, and 3) will continue to be threatened in the nearby future. This scenario turns urgent to provide tools to effectively protect freshwater biodiversity and its habitats under the ongoing threats and societal developments. Since 2013 I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of ApplEcol Laboratory at Biodiversity and Genetic Resources research centre (CIBIO-InBIO, Porto University, Portugal). In resume, after completing my graduation at Lisboa University, Portugal, I worked as a researcher at the CBA research centre in the same institution, and after at the Conservation, Biodiversity and Forestry Institute (ICNBF, Portugal). I further developed my PhD at the Lisboa University, in partnership with Virginia Tech University (USA), Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (Madrid, Spain), and Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência (MUHNAC, Portugal). I started as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona, Department of Ecology (2010-2012) under the BioFresh Project. During this year I developed studies concerning the impacts of non native species, dams, climate change, and habitat fragmentation in freshwater biodiversity, especially for the particularities of Mediterranean climate regions. I have been developing studies from local applied ecology to biogeography at different scale extents and resolutions of contemporary and historical biodiversity patterns. Those studies included database development and GIS platforms, methods of prioritizing regions to conserve, ecological analyses, invasibility, and spatial analyses."

Research Interest

My research focuses on Applied Ecology, namely regarding facets of biodiversity (taxonomic, functional, and genetic), with particular emphasis on the knowledge and conservation of freshwater biota at various geographical scales (watershed scale, Iberian Peninsula, Europe).