Lorenzo Quaglietta

Biography

"I focused my PhD - by ""La Sapienza"" Rome University, Italy - on the influence of spatio-temporal variability in the availability of patchily distributed (hydric and trophic) resources on space and habitat use by carnivores living in Mediterranean regions, using Eurasian otters as model-species. The project, called OPA (Otter Project in Alentejo), and performed in Southern Portugal in collaboration with Évora University and several students and volunteers from Portugal, Italy, Brazil, UK, USA, Ukraine, also led to: the collection of several first data on Lutra lutra's ecology, sample and study fish and crayfish populations (including radio-tracking of barbels, Barbus bocagei), and test GPS telemetry for the first time on an otter species. Currently (since October 2013), I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of APPLECOLLaboratory at Biodiversity and Genetic Resources research center (CIBIO-InBIO, Porto University, Portugal), planning a new research line on the ecology of semiaquatic freshwater mammals (emphasis on the Pyrenean desman, Galemys pyrenaicus, and Eurasian otter, Lutra lutra) in Northern Portugal. The project will focus on the assessment of the effects of hydroelectric infrastructures’ implementation (and other anthropogenic stressors, as well as spatial autocorrelation) on stream habitat fragmentation and population ecology (occupancy dynamics) of semiaquatic freshwater mammals. I am also currently working, together with Miguel Porto, on the development of a new R package for the analysis of telemetry data of organisms living in linear/dendritic environments (e.g., rivers)."

Research Interest

Iam broadly interested in animal ecology/behaviour, which I try to better understand by studying it using field (VHF and GPS telemetry, resource sampling) and molecular techniques, as well as advanced statistical and modelling approaches (e.g., mixed-effects and geostatistical models applied to dendritic networks).