Ph. D. Student
Integrative Marine Ecology Department
Tel.: +39 081 5833201
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Director of Studies: Marina Montresor
Internal Supervisor(s): Maria Grazia Mazzocchi
External Supervisor: Anke Kremp
Program: Open University, XX cycle
Research Interests
The marine environment remains largely unexplore while rapidly changing climatic conditions affect marine ecosystems in a rapid and conspicuous way. As a marine zoologist I am primarily interested on species responses to rapid environmental changes and the drivers of evolutionary processes. The array of strategies that marine organisms display in order to adapt and survive is the fundamental link between the persistance of a marine community in a given area and the evolutionary potential that each generation of organisms houses within in a population. One relevant strategy is the ability to undergo dormancy or the production of (dormant) or resting stages by planktonic organisms. Capable of bypassing extended periods of unfavourable conditions- because of their ability to undergo dormancy driven by morphological and physiological changes- resting stages are potential seed stocks for the persistence of planktonic populations.
During my Ph.D. I will be focusing on planktonic communities in the Golf of Naples, uncovering the proportion of marine planktonic species that are capable of producing resting stages that fall into the sediments as well as the role that resting stages play in population dynamics. Using light and electron microscopy as well as Next-Generation Sequencing metabarcoding I will investigate the community structure and abundance of planktonic species in sediments from coastal areas which have been impacted by terrestrial run offs and heavy pollutants.
