Ph. D. student
Dipartimento di Ecologia Marina Integrata
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Villa Comunale
80121 Napoli - Italia
Tel.: +39 081 5833280
Fax: +39 081 7641355
E-mail: flavio.rotolo(at)szn.it
Contatto Skype: live:flavio.rotolo
Director of Studies: Ylenia Carotenuto
Internal Supervisor(s): Isabella Buttino
External Supervisor: Sami Souissi
Program: Open University, XXI cycle
Research Interests
My PhD project focuses on two species of copepods (Crustacea – Maxillopoda): Acartia tonsa and Acartia clausi. The first is a model organism in Marine ecotoxicology for standardized bioassays, but is present in the Mediterranean Sea only in the northern Adriatic Sea ad is an invasive species. A. clausi, on the other hand, is morphologically and physiologically similar to A. tonsa, and is a native species of the Mediterranean; despite this, it is not as studied as the co-generic species.
Hence, the main effort of my PhD project will be to compare the responses of the two species and propose A. clausi as an alternative, more representative copepod species for risk assessment in the Mediterranean Sea.
To do so, first I will perform the standardized bioassays on A. tonsa, expecting well-defined physiological responses; then I will apply the same protocols on A. clausi, and I will compare their responses to referent toxicants and to emergent contaminants such as nickel nanoparticles (NiNPs), the focus on which has been increasing in the last years.
There will also be a focus on the gene expression of the two species, in control conditions and exposed to toxicants. These methodologies are relatively new to copepods in general and in particular to these species, and will give this project an "ecotoxigenomic" approach, which is encouraged in recent studies to extend the field of toxicology to Molecular biology.
