With us at the MEG: I am a master student from University of Turin and I am at the MEG to work on my master thesis under the supervision of Alejandro Martínez and Stefano Mammola.

I study the distribution patterns in freshwater subterranean and interstitial habitats of crustaceans, mostly of Amphipoda and Isopoda. In parallel, I’m going to conduct functional analyses at the community level, by getting and comparing functional traits from both literature and personal measurements of the samples collected. In addition to this, with the help of Alejandro, it will be interesting to do some study on molecular data to assess the phylogenies of the species.

The final goal of the research is in fact to have at my disposal distribution models, functional niche models and molecular data to better understand the evolutionary histories of different lineages. This can lead to more accurate interpretation of the correlation between the actual distribution of the animals and historical geological processes.